“50 Ways International Law Harms Us”: Not Your Typical ASIL Presidential Address

Word had it that Jose Alvarez would be not be offering up a conventional presidential address on Friday at the annual meeting of the American Society of International Law, and it lived up to the billing (good thing for the advance chatter; the general business session is usually skipable, unless you’re winning an award, although I hear things were also interesting at last year’s). Jose lamented the “rising smug level” among international lawyers, that self-congratulatory aura about us that roughly translates (in Jose’s description) to, “I’m an international lawyer and I’m here to help.” To bring the point home, at the speech he distributed a handout entitled “International Law: 50 Ways It Harms Our Lives,” a counterpoint to the booklet released by the ASIL last year during its centennial, “International Law: 100 Ways It Shapes Our Lives.” (Jose explained the asymmetry by way of preemptively rejecting the charge that IL does more harm than good.)

A sampling from among the 50 (perhaps we’ll try to post a pdf version): Encouraging global warming (no. 7). Keeping Winnie the Pooh out of the public domain (no. 11). Depriving you of your financial assets or your rights to travel at the whim of the Security Council (no. 16). Leaving liberty up to law professors (no. 24). Enabling NGO’s to bypass democracy (no. 26). Delaying access to life-saving medicines (no. 31). Reducing the prospect that future generations will see certain furry animals in Europe (no. 35). Failing to prevent genocide (no. 36). Privileging globalization over human rights (no. 44). Forcing multinational enterprises to attempt to deal with unpredictable ‘soft law’ (no. 50). All are accompanied by brief explanations. (In his speech, Jose cited this post by Duncan comparing the Kyoto and Montreal Protocols in support of no. 7.)

While some may have been taken aback by his remarks (a group, I suspect, that negatively correlates to the readership of this blog), I think Jose should be congratulated for prompting a little self-reflection in the community. It’s evidence of a maturing field that we no longer have to fanatically circle the wagons for fear of succumbing to IL skeptics. IL has transcended its ontological moment, and can now operate more like other areas of law, in which such scrutiny would hardly raise an eyebrow. We’ll see more examples in the future of this kind of healthy internal critique (and not just from the New Stream); IL will be a stronger quantity for it.