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The Purpose of International Law Is to Advance Justice—and International Law Has No Value Unless It Does So

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2018

Mortimer N.S. Sellers
Mortimer N.S. Sellers*
Affiliation:
University System of Maryland; Director, University of Baltimore Center for International and Comparative Law.
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Extract

The central topic of this year's annual meeting of the American Society of International Law has been “What International Law Values,” restated more forcefully in the title of this panel, “The Value and Purpose of International Law.” Notice the underlying assumption: that international law has value and serves some useful purpose. This premise is important because it supplies the basis on which international law seeks to secure our obedience and respect. We have no reason to obey or respect international law unless international law has some value or serves some useful purpose. This leads us to consider what this value and purpose might be. Which values and what purpose does international law exist to serve? Or, more important, which values and purpose would international law have to serve or advance if it were to deserve our obedience or respect? The answer can be given in one word: justice. Justice is the value that justifies or could justify international law, and justice is the purpose that international law properly seeks to serve and protect.

Type
The Value and Purpose of International Law
Information
Proceedings of the ASIL Annual Meeting , Volume 111 , 2017 , pp. 301 - 305
Copyright
Copyright © by The American Society of International Law 2018 

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Footnotes

*

Ms. Jacobsson did not contribute remarks for the Proceedings.

This panel was convened at 9:00 a.m., Saturday, April 15, 2017, by its moderator, Marie Jacobsson of the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who introduced the panelists: Mortimer Sellers of the University of Baltimore School of Law; Maxwell Chibundu of the Francis King Carey School of Law, University of Maryland, Baltimore; and Cecilia Bailliet of the University of Oslo Faculty of Law.*

References

1 M. Tullius Cicero, De legibus, I.vii.23.

2 See Madison, James, An Examination of the British Doctrine Which Subjects to Capture a Neutral Trade 41 (1806)Google Scholar on the “very definition” of “the law of nations,” which he identifies as “those rules of conduct which reason deduces, as consonant to justice and common good, from the nature of the society existing among independent nations.” This is also the best source for the meaning of the “law of nations” as the term is used in the United States Constitution.

3 See, e.g., U.S. Const. pmbl.

4 Law, Reason, and Emotion (Sellers, M.N.S. ed., 2017)Google Scholar.

5 Grotius, Hugo, De iure belli ac pacis 11 (1625)Google Scholar.

6 Wolff, Christian, Ius Gentium methodo scientifica pertractatum (1749)Google Scholar.

7 de Vattel, Emer, Droit des gens, ou Principes de la loi naturelle appliqués a la conduite et aux affaires des Nations et des Souverains (1758)Google Scholar.

8 Wheaton, Henry, Elements of International Law 46 (1836)Google Scholar. Cf. James Madison, supra note 2.

9 Wheaton, supra note 8, at 48–50.

10 Statute of the International Court of Justice, Art. 38.

11 M. Tullius Cicero, De legibus, I.vi.18, I.xii.33.

12 See Sellers, M.N.S., The Nature and Purpose of Law (forthcoming 2018)Google Scholar.