Ask anyone how strongly international law ought to be protected, and the chances are that you get one of two answers. Both would likely start with, “what kind of a question is this?” A first standard answer would explain that international law remains weak, that we do not see enough compliance anyhow, and that more compliance or harder law is by definition better; indeed, merely posing the question of how strongly international law should be protected risks undermining the binding nature of international law itself. A second group of people would find the question equally disturbing as, from their perspective, international law is not even law, given that it lacks central enforcement; thus, any discussion of variable levels of protection is a waste of time, as states will anyhow violate international law whenever they want to.

The first school of thought, driven to its extreme, is what I will call European absolutism. This is an extreme version of the constitutional approach to international law which holds that, once allocated, international entitlements cannot be modified or traded. Rather, they must be specifically performed unless, in the case of treaties, all treaty parties agree to reallocate the entitlement. Put differently, on this view, all international entitlements should, to some degree, be inalienable.