Why are smart people so stupid?
It's not an enforcement problem, tinkerbell. Bend over and listen very very carefully while I whisper it into your ear: IT'S NOT LAW.
International law has as much relation to law as law does to the laws of physics. It's nothing more than an unfortunate conflation of terms, one which law professors, to their great shame (and by all appearances, great ignorance), find convenient.
The issue is, you can't have law without a government. There is no international government. Therefore, there is no international law. Why His Virtualness falls into this trap I cannot say. But I can say, IT'S NOT LAW.
posted by ColumbusGuy @ 12:59 PM
4 Comments:
I'm with you that it's not law. E.g. when the WTO says "US, you were wrong to impose protectionist duties on corn," the only consequences that carries are those the trading partner can impose. There's no sovereign to enforce it, and therefore no law cum law. But it's definitely something, and you're the one who objects to the loose use of the word law, so what's your alternative phraseology?
I'm not sure I can be held responsible for that, can I? It's not that I mind, but it seems to me that it's the phraseology that's precisely the problem. It's so widely adopted already that there is no hope of dislodging it. ANd it's Orwellian, in the sense that it's going to continue to drive the meaning.
A more interesting question is, at what point will I be wrong? My guess is that international government won't arise by organic act; there won't be a constitutional convention with a date certain. Instead, we'll have little accretions, until one day every reasonable person will have to pretty much acknowledge, we have a world government.
That accretion model's certainly how most new, bigger forms of government arise, from my understanding of history. E.g. spartans and athenians first only coming together for mutual defense. So that's likely right, but I'd hedge with something along the external-threat-to-everyone model. That threat could be anything from an asteroid to people taking Al Gore at his word.
Yeah, and I guess I forgot the selfish PR aspect of it. It'll involve the Clintons, and CNN will celebrate it for two years before the fact, 168 hours straight during, and 10 years after.
Then they'll go back to bitching about Republicans.
So I take it back. There will be an organic event; it's just that the founding father will be Oprah.
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