Ethics and Authority in International Law (Cambridge Studies in International and Comparative Law, Series Number 5)

The specialized vocabularies of lawyers, ethicists, and political scientists obscure the roots of many real disagreements. In this book, the distinguished American international lawyer Alfred Rubin provides a penetrating account of where these roots lie, and argues powerfully that disagreements which have existed for 3,000 years are unlikely to be resolved soon. Attempts to make 'war crimes' or 'terrorism' criminal under international law seem doomed to fail for the same reasons that attempts failed in the early nineteenth century to make piracy, war crimes, and the international traffic in slaves criminal under the law of nations. And for the same reasons, Professor Rubin argues, it is unlikely that an international criminal court can be instituted today to enforce ethicists' versions of 'international law'. The specialized vocabularies of lawyers, ethicists and political scientists obscure the roots of many real disagreements. In this book, the distinguished American international lawyer Alfred P. Rubin provides a penetrating account of where these roots lie, and argues powerfully that disagreements which have existed for 3,000 years are unlikely to be resolved soon. Current attempts to make "war crimes" or "terrorism" criminal under international law seem doomed to fail for the same reasons that attempts failed in the early nineteenth century to make piracy and the international traffic in slaves criminal under the law of nations. And for the same reasons, Professor Rubin argues, it is unlikely that an international criminal court can be instituted today to enforce ethicists' and "natural law" advocates' versions of "international law."

The distinguished international lawyer Alfred Rubin argues powerfully that disagreements that have existed for thousands of years among lawyers, ethicists, and political scientists are unlikely to be resolved soon. Current attempts to make "war crimes" or "terrorism" criminal under international law seem doomed to fail for the same reasons that attempts failed in the early nineteenth century to make piracy, war crimes, and the international traffic in slaves criminal under the law of nations.

The relationship between universal crimes and universal jurisdiction has been disputed by statesmen and lawyers for at least 3,000 years.

alfred Rubin Provides A Powerful Account Of Positivism And International Law In The Modern World.