Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-995ml Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-29T05:53:07.017Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

8 - Causes of the Present Malaise, Concluding Observations, and a Prognosis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2012

John F. Murphy
Affiliation:
Villanova University, Pennsylvania
Get access

Summary

In this, the concluding chapter, it is important to emphasize that there has been no attempt in this chapter or earlier chapters to identify problems and challenges facing international law and international institutions as a whole. Rather, the focus has been on subjects and challenges that arguably are the most important, as well as the most challenging, facing the world community. To be sure, the problems facing treaties and customary international law, the primary sources of traditional international law, discussed in Chapter 1, concern international law as a whole but arise in their most acute form in the substantive fields covered by this study: the maintenance of international peace and security, the law of armed conflict, arms control, disarmament, nonproliferation and safeguards, human rights, and international environmental issues. These are fields that significantly affect vital interests of states and increasingly are of great concern to nonstate actors as well. They are also the fields where states and nonstate actors are most likely to fail to comply with their international law obligations and thus belie Louis Henkin's famous declaration that: “It is probably the case that almost all nations observe almost all principles of international law and almost all of the time.”

CAUSES OF THE PRESENT MALAISE

In the introduction to this study, it is suggested that the rapidity of change in modern life creates great instability and even chaos in some situations.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Evolving Dimensions of International Law
Hard Choices for the World Community
, pp. 266 - 274
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Markoff, John and Kramer, Andrew E., U.S. and Russia Differ on Treaty for Cyberspace, N.Y. TIMES, June 28, 2009, at 1, col. 5Google Scholar
MacFarquhar, Neil, When to Step in to Stop War Crimes Causes Fissures, N.Y. TIMES, July 23, 2009, at A10, col. 3Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×