Recently, international law, or more specifically, violation of international law, has been at the forefront of the media. For example, the U.S.- Israeli attacks on Iran have been criticized as a breach of UN Charter Article 2(4). The United Nations has “condemned” these actions, but nothing has actually been done. This has called into question the effectiveness of international law: why do these rules matter if countries are not actually obliged to follow them? What’s the point of international law? 

First, we need to establish there are two kinds of international law: binding and non-binding. So which one is more effective in ensuring state compliance? Binding law carries legal repercussions for violations, and non-binding law does not. At first glance, one would assume that binding law is more effective because there are repercussions for breaking it, which would encourage further compliance and cooperation. If a centralized coercive authority existed to punish states that violated international law, this would likely be true. However, there is no way to actually enforce binding international law in the same way that states enforce their own domestic laws. There is no central global authority, or put more simply, there is no official “world police” to punish violators of international law. Conversely, non-binding law is widely regarded as more effective than binding law because it does not require states to go through their domestic formal ratification processes. Since there is no coercive enforcement mechanism and all international law ultimately depends on voluntary compliance anyway, non-binding law is considered more effective because it is able to establish norms more quickly and broadly. This is especially important for countries where ratification of  specific binding agreements is less likely, especially due to concerns regarding sovereignty. For example, the 1948 Human Rights Declaration was a non-binding agreement, but has served as the foundation for human rights norms in the modern day. 

Essentially, the “point” of international law is that it helps to establish  “norms” for states to adhere to. Although international law cannot be enforced in the same way that domestic law would be, states are incentivized to follow international law because it represents a set of established global norms; such as collective security and sovereignty. Breaking these norms would damage a state’s credibility, hurting relations with other states. This is the reason international organizations are successful in sustaining cooperation: because they force states to repeatedly interact with each other, incentivizing “friendlier” behavior for fear that certain actions could cause them damage down the line. Furthermore, norms are entrenched by states and international organizations through a public calling out of violations, this is known as “naming and shaming.” This reputational pressure is the closest thing that international law has to an enforcement mechanism. 

However, it is important to acknowledge that there are limitations to the effectiveness of “naming and shaming.” Geopolitical affinity, or a state’s relationship to another state (positive or negative) is demonstrated to have an effect on which issues are brought to public attention (Terman and Byun 2021). Rival states are shown to criticize each other on more “sensitive” issues such as human rights abuses, while allied states will scrutinize “safer” problems such as socioeconomic inequality. Therefore, this form of enforcement through reputational pressure, though effective in some cases, is inconsistently applied because it is dependent on states’ political interests. 

Evidently, some states are more vulnerable to these reputational costs than others. Certain states are powerful and self-sufficient enough to not be dependent on the approval of other states. Also, some states have far more influence than others in setting these norms in the first place. For example, the permanent five members of the United Nations Security Council– the U.S., France, the U.K., Russia, and China –possess exclusive veto power regarding proposed resolutions. 

Why do these countries have such a large amount of influence over international law? Powerful states will always have more influence than other states when it comes to establishing global standards, and this has been institutionalized in international organizations such as the UN. Similarly, in the aforementioned process of “naming and shaming,” the criticisms of larger, more powerful states are given more credibility compared to those from smaller, weaker nations. Ultimately, because there is no central international authority, the cooperation and support of powerful states is vital to the credibility of international law and organizations as a whole. 

Evidently, international law has limitations: it reflects the existing global hierarchy, lacks enforcement power, and reputational pressure is inconsistently effective. Because of these factors and how they have impacted current events, we might be tempted to write it off as pointless. However, it is important to recognize that international law is still instrumental in sustaining international cooperation by providing a set of norms for states to follow. Although conflict is not eliminated, by creating an international order where criticism is encouraged, it is less likely than in the absence of the forum for cooperation that is facilitated by international law. 

References: 

Terman, Rochelle, and Joshua Byun. “Punishment and Politicization in the International Human Rights Regime.” American Political Science Review, vol. 116, no. 2, Nov. 2021, pp. 1–18, https://doi.org/10.1017/s0003055421001167.