Studying International Law has done as much to convince me of the fundamental disconnect between reality and the people in charge of government as any scandal or other act of openly-brandished, willful ignorance in recent memory. One the one hand, it's somewhat refreshing to see so nakedly presented the hypocrisy of people who've never had to worry about being on the wrong side of power, when it comes to applying it. On the other hand, it's pretty infuriating. Let nobody tell you otherwise - the practice of public international law is the practice of creative writing, in service of whatever whims happen to be dancing about within the judge's head, with lip service paid toward concepts like "basic human decency" and absolute, unswerving devotion to sacred cows like "state immunity". Some will tell you it's because the former are ill-defined and the latter have concrete definitions - these are both true facts, but they're totally beside the point, which is that nations have found themselves in a Hobbesian state of nature and decided that consent really should be the sole basis of the law (except when it comes to people, obviously - only politicians can be trusted with that kind of discretion).
Now, don't get me wrong. I understand the idea that courts shouldn't be able to unilaterally do as they please, just because of moral convictions one way or the other. In fact, I endorse that perspective pretty heavily. I'm surprisingly cool with courts doing things that are apparently evil because the law forbids it, or the precedent they'd create would be a greater evil still. That's not actually the issue, here. The problem isn't in the particular applications of the law letting injustice slip through the cracks - it's that the very foundation of the law is based on the same sort of peculiar sense of entitlement that lets an aristocrat decry as the real entitlement any demands that a shred of responsibility be exercised with the power he's been lucky enough to inherit.
Basically, one of my classes this semester has been in dealing with the contortions of "logic" that prop up a vision of global society that hasn't advanced since fucking Westphalia. And it's been really unpleasant.
EDIT: Wow, that was really vague. Let me be more concrete! A big problem is that there's no logical consistency in the law. There is consistency, but it's purely that nations with power in a given scenario tend to use that power to benefit themselves. There are, however, voluminous writings about why "this ruling is totally unbiased and fair, guys, trust us!" So, not only is the field filled with hypocrisy that's forced to stand as precedent, not only is "nation-states are self-serving" a more reliable guide to predicting outcomes than any actual legal principle, but the literature is solidly filled with authors who refuse to admit it and mistake complexity for nuance.
Author
Topic: Things that made you sad today thread. (Read 9706196 times)