In his recent article, Nico Krisch joins an increasing number of scholars who worry about the “turn toward nonconsensual structures” in international lawmaking. Although the article is primarily descriptive and does not set out to offer either a rigorous explanation or a normative assessment of this trend, Krisch does suggest that the trend “reflects the fact that the need for greater cooperation [at the global level] . . . is not always, or not even typically, satisfied by international law.” It also gives voice to the concern that the move to informal institutions “point[s] in the direction of more hierarchical forms of governance” that increasingly cater to a small number of powerful states, rather than to the traditional, broad, consent-based order.

In the mid-nineteenth century, the great anthropologist Henry Sumner Maine observed that legal systems tended to move over time from “status to contract” by which he meant that rights and duties were increasingly determined by consent rather than social or demographic factors. Maine’s thesis might have been applied to international law during the long era of high positivism, in which consent became the dominant principle after the Peace of Westphalia. Formal equality of states meant that formal treaties—”contract”—were the main mode of interaction. Even in the post-World War II era, consent played a major role, in part because the Security Council—the chief vehicle for legal exercise of “status”—was anemic. International organizations served as vehicles for the development of multilateral treaties of increasing scope and depth. Status and power were hidden rather than acknowledged elements of the system.