Rethinking international law

In the new issue of Policy Review, Peter Berkowitz reviews three new books on international law: “Laws of nations.” Professor Berkowitz writes lucidly on a difficult subject.
Among the books covered in this valuable review/essay is the new book by Jack Goldsmith and Eric Posner addressing the pretensions of international law: The Limits of International Law. Berkowitz says the book represents a “frontal assault on the liberal internationalist view that international law emerges from reflection on moral principles and that states comply with it in in significant measure because of its moral and legal claims upon them.”
The third of the three books covered in the review is by Cornell Professor Jeremy Rabkin. This book is Rabkin’s scholarly scholarly counterpart to The Case for Sovereignty: Why the World Should Welcome American Independence. Professor Rabkin’s new book is Law Without Nations? Why Constitutional Government Requires Sovereign States.

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