Document Type
Article
Repository Date
2010
Keywords
Reciprocal entitlements, Countermeasures, Tit-for-Tat, Proportionality of Response, International law, Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties
Subject Categories
Conflict of Laws | International Law | Law
Abstract
International law is enforced by the process I describe as reciprocal-entitlement violation. The violation may be of the same entitlement or, more likely, of a different entitlement. But it is on the whole an effective process—as effective for the international legal system as is the enforcement of most laws in domestic systems via the state-sanctioned deprivation of one or more entitlements held by individual citizens or corporations. It is impossible to understand why nations do or refrain from doing the things they do without understanding what the entitlements are and how nations act to preserve their full complement of existing entitlements.
Repository Citation
D'Amato, Anthony, "Is International Law Really ‘Law’?" (2010). Faculty Working Papers. 103.
https://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/facultyworkingpapers/103
