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Review Essay - Remarks On Post-Sovereignty And International Legal Neo-Conservatism: Reading Jeremy Rabkin

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 March 2019

Abstract

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Copyright © 2007 by German Law Journal GbR 

References

1 Ignacio de la Rasilla del Moral, Alicia a través del espejo o apuntes para una teoría neoconservadora del Derecho internacional Revue Quebecoise de Droit International, forthcoming (2007).Google Scholar

2 Jeremy A. Rabkin, The Case For Sovereignty: Why The World Should Welcome American Independence (2004).Google Scholar

3 Rabkin (note 2), xiv.Google Scholar

4 Jeremy A. Rabkin, Law Without Nations, Why Constitutional Government Requires Sovereign States (2007).Google Scholar

5 Rabkin (note 4), 17.Google Scholar

6 Note Kofi Annan's remark “the language of global society is international law”, cited in Rabkin (note 3), 114.Google Scholar

7 Rabkin (note 2), 21.Google Scholar

8 Rabkin (note 4), 1-17.Google Scholar

9 Rabkin (note 2), 120.Google Scholar

10 Rabkin (note 4), 276.Google Scholar

11 “But a number of nations have viewed themselves as, in some way, a new Israel- distinctive, luminous, faithful to some special destiny” Rabkin (note 6), 11. This remark concludes two pages of text in which the author does not spare his readers of interpretations of the Hebrew bible according to which the Babel's resulting “division of mankind was, in some way, necessary or providential” Rabkin (note 4), p.8-10.Google Scholar

12 Rabkin (note 4), 12.Google Scholar

13 Andrew Moravcsik The Threat from Europe: Review of Jeremy A. Rabkin's The Case for Sovereignty, Prospect 69, 69 (April, 2006).Google Scholar

14 Both successive books evidenced to be addressed to appeal an American audience already sympathetic with its underlying postulates. Unadvised foreigners, but specially Europeans, are likely to soon find themselves forcing to adopt a sociological external perspective in view of its ultra-nationalistic tone.Google Scholar

15 Rabkin (note 4), 148.Google Scholar

16 Id., 4.Google Scholar

17 Id., 148.Google Scholar

18 Id., 144-148.Google Scholar

19 Id., 146.Google Scholar

20 Rabkin (note 2), 147.Google Scholar

21 Id., (note 2), 9.Google Scholar

22 Rabkin (note 2), 197.Google Scholar

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24 Rabkin (note 2), 9.Google Scholar

25 171 states of the world -including Russia, China and India- have already ratified the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, http://unfccc.int/2860.php (last acceded 16th May, 2007) Note, furthermore, the developments occurred in the June 2007 G8 Summit concerning this issue.Google Scholar

26 Rabkin (note 2), 36.Google Scholar

27 Rabkin (note 4), 146.Google Scholar

28 Rabkin (note 4), 146.Google Scholar

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36 “Many scholars thus seem to embrace post-modernism with the exuberance of adolescents, discovering that sex is a lot more appealing and lot more available than they had realised as children,” Rabkin (note 2), 15.Google Scholar

37 Jack Goldsmith, & Eric A. Posner The Limits of International Law (2005), Glennon, Michael Platonism, Adaptivism, and Illusion in UN Reform 6 Chicago Journal of International Law, (2006) or Yoo, John C, Force Rules: UN Reform and Intervention 6 Chicago Journal of International Law, (2006) among other referential authors.Google Scholar

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41 A brief comment by Rabkin on that debate can be found as Jeremy A Rabkin Reaction for Notre Europe to Andrew Moravcskik's article: “What can we learn from the Collapse of the European Constitutional Project?, Notre Europe Etudes & Recherches, (October 2006) at http://www.notre-europe.eu/uploads/tx_publication/Moravcsik-ReponseRabkin-en_01.pdf (last acceded, 16th May, 2007).Google Scholar

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47 Lorite Escorihuela (note 33).Google Scholar

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49 It should be noted that I am not attempting to trace with this remark a parallelism with what mutatis mutandi David Kennedy has defined as the “dark sides, unjustified biases and blind spots” of humanitarian thinking. See David Kennedy, El Lado Oscuro De La Virtud, (trans. prel. essay by Francisco J Contreras and Ignacio de la Rasilla) 2007.Google Scholar

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51 Marks, Susan “International Judicial Activism and the Commodity-Form Theory of International Law” European Journal Of International Law, Vol. 18, 199 (2007).Google Scholar

52 This framework of analysis was highly influenced by Vagts, Detlev, F., Hegemonic International Law in 95 Am J Int'l L 843 (2001). Among the different symposia see American-European Dialogue: Different Perceptions of International Law in Zeitschrift Für Ausländisches Öffentliches Recht Und Völkerrecht, 64/2, 2004; and the Symposium: The US and International Law in European Journal Of International Law, Vol. 15, No. 4, 2004.Google Scholar

53 Reisman, Michael M., The Past and Future of the Claim of Pre-Emptive Self-Defense 100 Am. J. Int'l L. 525 (2006).Google Scholar

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55 For a reaction see: Thienel, Tobias, The Admissibility of Evidence Obtained by Torture under International Law European Journal Of International Law Vol. 17,367 (2006).Google Scholar

56 Rabkin (note 4), 37.Google Scholar

57 Rabkin (note 4), 280.Google Scholar

58 “Rabkin's is a serious statement of all that cosmopolitanism and post-modern humanism must overcome in their quest for a more just global order”, Paul Carrese, Review of Law Without Nations 16 Law And Politics Book Review, 182 (February 2006), http://www.bsos.umd.edu/gvpt/lpbr/subpages/reviews/rabkin0206.htm (last acceded, 14th May, 2007) Prof. Carrese's review constitutes a balance attempt to analyse the originalist constitutional approach of the book from a his “own scholarship” which “lies closer to Rabkin's perspective of originalism” insofar as “Rabkin elaborates the minority view on law and government among American and European academics” by stressing and engaging with the analysis of the libertarian philosophical foundations of the book.Google Scholar

59 Rabkin (note 4), 27.Google Scholar

60 In justifying US’ unilateralism through the exemplification of the absolute lack of faith that one should posed in the UN in light e.g. of Rwanda's genocide, “The UN official responsible for withdrawing the peacekeepers, Kofi Annan, was later promoted to secretary-general, and was subsequently awarded a Nobel Peace Prize – for peacekeeping! Rabkin (note 2), 84.Google Scholar

61 Rabkin (note 4), 124.Google Scholar

62 Rabkin (note 4) 123.Google Scholar

63 Rabkin (note 2), 124.Google Scholar

64 e.g. AI's campaign against capital punishment in the US vs withholding of comment about mass murder in Cambodia, Rabkin (note 4), 176.Google Scholar

65 “Is the perfect motto for advocates and institutions that take pride in answering to no one” Rabkin (note 4), 188.Google Scholar

66 “That could mean that “fundamental elements of American domestic law would, in effect, be made in international forums or in other countries and then simply appropriated by American judges” Rabkin (note 4), 23.Google Scholar

67 Rabkin (note 4), 31.Google Scholar

68 The ICC, perhaps the single front to which more references are to be found in both books, is one of the black beasts of NIL. Rabkin's attacks on the ICC do not stop in subtitles: “Europeans are drawn to relativizing abstractions. For Germans, the ICC promises to “overcome the past,” by licensing German judges to try Americans and Israelis for war crimes”. Note, however, that such a remark is not an isolated passage in one of the books under review or even a discreet footnote, but it makes part of the abstract itself of Jeremy Rabkin, World Apart on International Justice 15 Leiden Journal Of International Law, 835 (2002).Google Scholar

69 Rabkin (note 2), 116.Google Scholar