Abstract
Critics of international law argue that it is not really law because it
lacks a supranational system of coercive sanctions. International legal
scholars and lawyers primarily refute this by demonstrating that
international law is in fact enforced, albeit in decentralized and less
coercive ways. I will focus instead on the presumption behind this
skeptical view—the idea that law must be coercively enforced. First, I
argue that coercive enforcement is not conceptually necessary for law or
legal obligations. Second, I consider the claim that coercive enforcement
is nonetheless necessary for instrumental reasons. I argue that while
physical coercion is instrumentally useful for increasing compliance in the
domestic case, this is less effective and more problematic in the
international case. What then is essential and distinctive about law, and
what would increase the effectiveness of international law? First,
international law needs to be generally accepted as binding by states,
officials, and other agents; and second, international legal rules should be
determinatively interpreted and applied by authoritative, adjudicative, and
administrative institutions.