International Law and International Relations Theory

21299 Words86 Pages
[pic] LexisNexis™ Academic Copyright (c) 1993 The American Society of International Law American Journal of International Law April, 1993 87 A.J.I.L. 205 LENGTH: 19475 words ARTICLE: INTERNATIONAL LAW AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS THEORY: A DUAL AGENDA NAME: Anne-Marie Slaughter Burley * BIO: * Assistant Professor of Law and International Relations, University of Chicago. I am grateful to Andrew Moravcsik for much valuable discussion and helpful readings of several early drafts. Abram Chayes, Robert Keohane and Jay Westbrook contributed their insights. Thanks are also due to Sarah Fandell for excellent research assistance and to the Lee and Brena Freeman Faculty Research Fund at the University of Chicago Law School for financial support. SUMMARY: ... Writing in 1968 on the "relevance of international law," Richard Falk described his efforts as part of the larger endeavor of "liberating the discipline of international law from a sense of its own futility." ... Thus redefined as a flow of authoritative and effective decisions, law merges with the political and social processes that ultimately determine its content, yet retains a distinctive identity as law. ... The strength and relevance of such an order was enhanced by his de-emphasis of the constraint function of international law in favor of a host of other functions that international legal norms can and often do perform in international relations. ... Abram Chayes, Thomas Ehrlich and Andreas Lowenfeld also recast international law as process, but as "international legal process." ... A corollary to the international legal process approach is the collection of empirical evidence demonstrating the role of international law in specific international crises. ... If the earlier systems theorists had understood international legal norms to be inevitably conditioned and ultimately
Open Document