Document Type
Essay
Publication Title
Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law
Publication Date
2006
Volume
34
First Page
393
Abstract
(Excerpt)
The Limits of International Law stands on the shoulders of international relations realists who have traditionally argued that international law does not affect interstate relations and is therefore unworthy of much scholarly attention. International law scholars have in many ways set out to disprove the realist claim and explain the sources and effects of law as separate from politics: Why do states, which are driven primarily (according to realist theory) by a need to protect and expand security interests, insist on using international law at all? In Limits, Jack Goldsmith and Eric Posner engage both the international relations and international law scholarship to answer that question with a short, simple, and in many ways appealing, rational choice twist on realism: "International law emerges from states acting rationally to maximize their interests given their perceptions of the interests of other states and the distribution of state power." According to the Limits thesis, international law is what states create as a result of interstate relations, but it does not affect state behavior in the way most international law scholarship assumes
Comments
Available at: https://digitalcommons.law.uga.edu/gjicl/vol34/iss2/7/