The Guardian
A coalition of states is needed to stop the international legal order falling apart, a distinguished international academic has warned.
Oona Hathaway, the president-elect of the American Society of International Law and a former Pentagon legal adviser, said the core of the postwar global order – the prohibition on taking land by force – was under unprecedented challenge in a “scary moment” for the world.
The Yale Law School professor cited the willingness of the US government to delegitimise institutions that Washington helped create, including the international court of justice (ICJ).
Her intervention comes when the Ukraine and Gaza conflicts have generated global interest in international law possibly not seen since the Nuremberg trials after the second world war.
“There is an increased awareness that this is a really scary moment, but what will it take for people to put their differences aside and come up with something new and radical?” she said while on a visit to the UK to deliver two lectures. “I hope it does not take total collapse, but it might. I don’t know. We will see.”
Hathaway said the protection of civilians under international humanitarian law was being “eroded to the point of threatening to lose all meaning” and said a crisis of authority was looming at the ICJ. Its workload is growing, with more states seeking its opinion, but compliance with its rulings has fallen from 80% to closer to 50%. Hathaway said a delegitimised court would “put the entire system at risk”.
She said: “We are not seeing a global response to the US willingness to flout international law. It is probably time to start thinking about that.”
With the UN security council unable to enforce ICJ rulings, she proposed novel measures to allow nation states to seek compliance with court orders.
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