Is International Law Really Law?

Beyond Compliance: Rethinking Why International Law Really Matters

The conceptual, and more recently empirical, study of compliance has become a central preoccupation, and perhaps the fastest growing subfield, in international legal scholarship. The authors seek to question this trend. They argue that looking at the aspirations of international law through the lens of rule compliance leads to inadequate scrutiny and understanding of the diverse complex purpose...

Ethics Governing International Investment Contracts unless the Applicable Law is Established

Background: Settlement of disputes arising from foreign investment may be possible if the governing law is clear. Irrespective of international treaties, since the legal relationship between the investor and the investee is often included in investment contracts, the law governing such contracts is determined. But there are cases where the ruling law has not been determined. In this case, three...

InternatIonal Soft law

Although the concept of soft law has existed for years, scholars have not reached consensus on why states use soft law or even whether “soft law” is a coherent analytic category. In part, this confusion reflects a deep diversity in both the types of international agreements and the strategic situations that produce them. In this paper, we advance four complementary explanations for why states u...

On Teaching International Law

Beyond International Law: Unilateral Resort to Force in Syria

On April 14, 2018, the United States, Britain and France launched missile attacks on specific targets in the Syrian Arab Republic, including the provinces of Damascus and Homs. According to coalition of three states, these attacks were followed by the Syrian government's use of chemical weapons and targeted solely against its chemical weapons facilities. What have in the days after the act been...