by Wyoming_Jackrabbit

The international law is a method of legal norms which interstate attitudes with a view of maintenance of the world and cooperation. International relationships are the relationships with participation of the states, the international organizations and formations. In the field of international politics, realism, either classical realism or neo-realism, has extremely little space for international law. It dismisses international law as being practically irrelevant to matters of high politics. In contrast, in the field of international law, legal positivism has paid scant regard to non-legal political considerations that might influence the implementation of international law. Positive lawyers have concentrated on determining a body of legal rules and believe it really should be obeyed even if it is not. Therefore there is a energy-law divide realists, accepting legal positivists’ standing that law is a body of rules, deny the significance of international law on state’s behavior and disdain international law as an epiphenomena role in the ordering of international life.

The above two maneuvers, although employing different techniques, reach a typical conclusion that the function of international law is not affected by the absence of central authorities in the globe and is not restricted to the function as the restraint to state behavior. It can carry out a wider range of functions such as communication, justification, reassurance, monitoring and re-utilization besides constraint.

In reality, the realists’ misunderstanding of the nature and the functions of international law will inevitably trigger them to underestimate the influence of international law. If they are appropriate to say that the capacities or power rather than legal norms account for the behavior of states, we really should witness the repetitive premeditated and deliberated violation of international law simply because realists holds that international law fails as soon as national interests diverge from what the law requires.

Even so, the genuine globe situation is different from what the realists suppose. As what Chayes argues in New Sovereignty, despite the fact that we see some worrisome cases of non-compliance such as Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait and North Korea’s refusal to the inspection of International Atomic Energy Agency, such instances are the exception rather than a widespread phenomenon. The non-compliance, as analyzed by Chayes, may possibly come from the “ambiguity and indeterminacy of treat language, limitations on the capacity of parties to carry out their undertakings, and the temporal dimension of the social, economic, and political alterations contemplated by regulatory treaties”.(Chayes &amp Chayes 1995, 10) But states do not do it intentionally.

Besides, we also witness a growing influence of the United Nations on international affairs right after the Cold War. And the World Trade Organization provides us one more great example of compliance. For that reason, realists misunderstand the significance of international law. This point will be further discussed in the following section.

All the above discussion is confined to the field of international legal studies. But soon after discussing realists’ underestimation of the influence international law, we need to have also to discuss some political response to this misunderstanding. Since the response from the literature of international relations theory is not the concentrate of this paper, we just discuss them briefly. The first response comes from the regime theory, or the institutionalism. It disagrees with realism on that power is the only independent variables in explaining international interaction. They argue that the international regimes — sets of principles, norms, rules and decision-generating procedures–also shape the states’ behaviors and expectations.

Realism not only misunderstands the importance of international norms (similar to international law) but also misunderstand the nature of international politics. In reality, institutionalism and international legal studies share a typical ontology of the international system: the actors, the structure with which those actors act, and the procedure of interaction. And each concentrate on the studies of improved institutional design for better efficiency and compliance. While institutionalism attack the “energy as only explaining variable” assumption of realism, liberalism attack the “state as the unit of analysis” assumption of realism. It emphasizes the interaction among states, domestic civil societies and transnational civil societies.

Liberalism may possibly complement institutionalism as the study mainly of law among liberal states, which is also a proposed subject of our course. Other international political theories such as constructivism also provide us insight to the logic of anarchy and self-help of states which is also an important assumption of realism. Considering that the limit of the space, we just skip it. 1 doable critique may possibly state that it is not realists who misunderstand the nature, function and influence of international law but the scholars of international legal studies re-conceptualize their understanding of international law in order to response to the realist challenge.

This critique is plausible since the realist challenge of international law was prior to the development of above legal arguments. But I think the purpose of investigation is not to argue who is wrong or not but to increase our understanding of the complicated international interaction. It is not crucial whether or not it is realists’ misunderstanding. It is critical that we gain new insight into international law and international politics. An additional critique may be that in the above discussion we just present several legal approaches’ responses to the questions but we do not have a unified approach to account for all the aspects we’ve discussed. I feel the feasible solution may be the convergence of international legal studies and institutionalism, which will offer us much better understanding to both international law and international politics.

In the paper, we mainly address three misunderstandings of realism on the nature, function and influence of international law. Rather taking into consideration international law as a body of rules of coercion without significance in its own right, we argue that it is a method with numerous functions and importance in its own appropriate. We’ve examined and discussed numerous important international legal approaches and in the finish, extended our discussion to the field of international politics a small bit. Although we still leave some troubles unresolved mainly simply because we do not further the discussion of international law and institutionalism, this paper, as a summary of what we have learned in this quarter, is nonetheless meaningful, I believe.

Firoze Manji: Nothing in international law enables regime modify and assassination of a leader
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Question by O’Fallie: International Law?
If you studied or are studying international law or perform in the field, please tell me exactly where you studied and if you take pleasure in what you do.

I am presently a legal studies significant hoping to start off law school in 2008. I would like to study international law whilst in law school.
My existing preferences for law schools are [US] Columbia University, Boston University, New York University [England] London College, Oxford University [SA] Univeristy of Witwatersrand Law School,University of Capetown, University of Stellenbosch.
There is of course the University of the West Indies (both Mona and Augustine campuses).
As you can see I do not genuinely care what country I got to law school in as long as they speak english and have courses in international law.

I am also interested in laws on the rights of the kid and course in that region.

If you have studied or are studying law in any of these schools please let me know what you thought/feel about your encounter.

Thank you!
Properly I did do some study. That is why Columbia, Boston University and NYU are my top 3 schools in the US. All 3 have excelent international law programs. Columbia offers a Dual degree programme that enables you to earn your JD and LLM in three years in a joint programme among Columbia and affiliated London Universities. Boston U has an excelent study abroad program, it has 1 of the only undergraduate legal internships (their Summer in London programme). NYU has a very good reputation as well. UWI is has the most recognised law school in the English speaking Caribbean. While the South Afircan law schools all teach international law 1 in fact has courses on the charter of child rights

My difficulty is that sites and books can only tell you so a lot about these areas and what to anticipate studying there. Hearing the encounter of some one who has really done it provides me a far better understanding of what to expec.
Thanks to every person who has aswered so far.

Best answer:

Answer by wizardmenlopark
Duke Law School…exceptional…and they have a joint JD/LLM program

Know much better? Leave your own answer in the comments!