Реферат: International Law Essay Research Paper International law
legally – to undertake collective action that will have sanctioning result.
In instances of threats to or breaches of the peace short of war, they may
decide politically to take anticipatory action short of force. Moreover,
it is for the members of the Security Council to determine when a threat to
peace, a breach of peace, or an act of aggression has occured. Even thi
determination is made on political rather than legal criteria. The
Security Council may have a legal basis for acting, but self-interst
determines how each of it members votes, irrespective of how close to
aggression the incident at issue may be. Hence by virtue of both its
constitutional limitations and the exercise of sovereign prerogatives by
its members, the security council’s role as a sanctioning device in
international law is sharply restricted.
As the subject matter of the law becomes more politicized, states
are less willing to enter into formal regulation, or do so only with
loopholes for escape from apparent constraints. In this area, called the
law of community, governments are generally less willing to sacrifice their
soverein liberties. In a revolutionary international system where change
is rapid and direction unclear, the integrity of the law of community is
weak, and compliance of its often flaccid norms is correspondingly
uncertain.
The law of the political framework resides above these other two
levels and consists of the legal norms governing the ultimate power
relations of states. This is the most politicized level of international
relations; hence pertinent law is extremely primitive. Those legal norms
that do exist suffer from all the political machinations of the states who
made them. States have taken care to see that their behaviour is only
minimally constrained; the few legal norms they have created always provide
avenues of escape such as the big-power veto in the UN Security Council.
Despite the many failures and restrictions of international law,