The Economic Structure of International Law The Economic Structure of International Law [...]... evaluate the formation and application of law in all of these areas At the core of analysis of international law as a system, and permeating to the very periphery, is the question of jurisdiction: the legal manifestation of power, or authority Even issues of “cooperation,” which are the focus of much of international law and international politics scholarship, are just a subset of the problem of allocation... influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist.”7 Some international lawyers engage in the “mere intellectual play” of theorizing without empirical validation Others believe that the main source of prescription is untested theory in the form of natural law The law and economics of international law calls for the integration of theory and practice However, it rejects natural law based prescription... International Law Chapter 3 draws substantially from my 2005 article with George Norman, The Customary International Law Game, originally published in the American Journal of International Law Chapter 5 draws some material from my 1996 article, The Theory of the Firm and the Theory of the International Economic Organization Excerpts reprinted by special permission of Northwestern University School of Law, Northwestern... Jurisdiction is the power of states in a legal setting All international law is concerned with establishing or restraining the power of states This book represents the culmination of a number of years of study of the economic analysis of international law It is not a mere restatement of my study of economic analysis of international law over these years, but an attempt to consolidate, integrate, rectify,... the billiard ball of the state This is a result of the limitations of analytical technique, and not of a view that it is unnecessary to examine the internal workings of states Indeed, one important way of looking at international law is in terms of its effects on domestic politics: in this conception, the role of international law is to strengthen the domestic coalition in favor of a certain type of. .. 1 2 The Economic Structure of International Law It is therefore important to note that economic methods, properly applied, contain no prejudices in favor of property or against the state Furthermore, it is simply bad economics—often an ignorant application of the Coase theorem—to assume that the market mode of allocation is always superior to bureaucratic allocation by government The fundamental theorem... institutions, and their powers of intervention, so as 4 The Economic Structure of International Law to maximize the combined efficiency of market allocations and governmental allocations Finally, economic analysis is committed to liberalism, as it comes to law with no preferences of its own, other than the overarching respect for the preferences of individuals This is the most challenging part of economic analysis... allocation of authority-based understanding of the systemic structure of international law may seem artificial, it is substantively accurate and allows us to develop a parsimonious understanding of the structure of the international legal system What sets international law apart from domestic law in unitary states is that international law is concerned, first and foremost, with issues of allocation of authority... Association, the American Society of International Law, the Berkeley International Law and Politics Seminar, Columbia Law School, Georgetown Law Centre, the European University Institute, several seminars at Harvard Law School, Michigan Law School, the Max Planck Institute for Collective Goods, the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law, New York University School of Law, UCLA Law. .. simplify this theory while retaining some predictive capacity Limits of the Domestic -International Analogy It is not necessary to analogize the world of international relations to a private market in order to apply the tools of law and economics to the international realm Of course, there are many differences Recall that we are seeking from domestic law and economics useful theory to generate hypotheses for . The Economic Structure of International Law The Economic Structure of International Law