Shadows across the Path 467He called on international lawyers to “come out of [their] ivory towers...
and work at the job of making international law a ser viceable institution for
the individual human being.”
Over the ensuing de cades, it appeared that international lawyers had fol-
lowed this advice. Perhaps all too earnestly. Since about 1980, international
aff airs have intruded ever more deeply into sundry walks of life that had once
been thought to be the exclusive prerogative of individual states— from eco-
nomic relations to environmental protection to human rights. International
lawyers— the foremost consumers at this great transnational smorgasbord—
would naturally be expected to look on this state of aff airs with hearty (not to
say well- fed) approval. Others, however, have been less pleased. Interna-
tional law may no longer be so far away from ordinary lives, but it continues
to have something of an alien character, representing the preferences of
distant elites with their potentially ominous- sounding agenda of “globaliza-
tion” (a word coined in the 1980s).
Th is globalization agenda could easily be regarded as more threatening
than liberating. Th e increasing freedom of trade and investment, for ex-
ample, brought fears on the part of local economic interests of being out-
competed by distant (and oft en low- paid) foreigners. On a broader level,
fears have grown that economic liberalization leads to greater in e qual ity,
to environmental degradation, and to oppressive labor conditions in poor
countries.
Th ere have also been worries that international human- rights bodies in-
trude too offi ciously into the national aff airs of many states— without show-
ing suffi cient respect for the distinctive features of diff erent cultures. Th e
Eu ro pe an Court of Human Rights, for example, while conceding that pop u-
lar attitudes and the “moral climate” of a par tic u lar society are factors to be
considered, held that it— and not the national authorities— has the fi nal say
on whether a given restriction on freedom is really “necessary in a demo-
cratic society.”
Misgivings have been voiced within the legal profession, too. Eric Posner,
of the University of Chicago Law School, warned of what he called, in a
book published in 2009, Th e Perils of Legal Globalism. Posner defi ned legal
globalism as “an excessive faith in the effi cacy of international law” and al-
ternatively as the belief that “international law transcends the interests of