Re: Ron Paul's Letter of Marque, aka "screw the law!"

My point is this, when enforcing the law on individuals,
police officers are given the authority to KILL individuals
who fail to obey the law, especially when their lives or
other lives are considered to be at stake.

The only way for international law to work is if the next
time the U.S tries bombing a country without authorization,
therefore, breaking the law, a fleet of UN jets take out any
U.S. aircraft, just as a police officer will kill a bank
robber or a murder suspect if he doesn't do what the officer
says. Now THAT would be REAL international law.

I have no time for the esoterica of legal maneuvers, I want
some genius to come up with a REAL enforcement mechanism
that will make the U.S. feel some pain.


Art


> Reply-To: bonobos-4GNy1lrxftmrG/[email protected]
> To: bonobos-4GNy1lrxftmrG/[email protected]
> Subject: Re: [Bonobos] Ron Paul's Letter of Marque, aka "screw the law!"
> 
> On Tue, Oct 16, 2001 at 10:14:20PM -0700, Art McGee wrote:
> > > As if international law didn't even exist...
> > 
> > It doesn't. International "Law" is an illusion that has no
> > enforcement power backing it up, nor is it considered to
> > have authority over the sovereignty of the nation-state.
> 
> First, hi, Art, it's great to have you on this list.
> 
> Second, that's not my understanding. :> 
> 
> Yes, the UN Charter presupposes a shared or mutual security arrangement for
> member states, one which has never been implemented, except on a regional
> basis, i.e., NATO (and the Warsaw Pact, I think). I don't see why, in
> principle, such an arrangement couldn't be implemented, given certain
> changes.
> 
> However, treaties are legally binding on states that are signatory to them.
> And states act as if this is true every day.  Even as imperial a state as
> the US often limits its policies to fit the bounds of (some parts of)
> international law.  And this is a pretty common facet of international
> relations *ordinarily*, hence the WTO/WIPO, treaties and international court
> rulings about underwater boundaries, and the like. (In other words, I don't
> think to exist per se international law has to be taken to have "authority
> over the sovereignty of the nation-state". I think the conceptual apparatus
> used at this point is some kind of self-binding, self-obligating notion.)
> 
> When it comes to the use of force and "security", it's certainly true that
> illegality, according to treaty or customary law, does not often prevent
> states from doing as they please, but then municipal law often fails in
> precisely the same way. The ratios are different and clearly if no one ever
> respects the bounds of law, that's a limit situation.
> 
> > The only way to have real International Law is to dispose
> > of the sacredness of the nation-state, but that won't be
> > happening anytime soon.
> 
> Well, I confess to having been fairly convinced of the (at least) conceptual
> possibility of a rational utopia, in which international law would play a
> vital role, given the continued existence of states, by John Rawls's *The
> Law of Peoples*, which I find both challenging and frustrating.
> 
> I might redescribe what I take to be your point thus: Empire necessarily
> overawes international law, using it when and where it promotes imperial
> interests (WTO, GATT, WIPO, UN Charter->NATO, etc), disdaining it where it
> does not (World Court decision condemning US aggression against Nicaragua).
> 
> So I don't find the existence of the state to be a necessary impediment to a
> functioning regime of international law, per se, but the existence of Empire
> does necessarily impede such a regime (well, at any rate, I think I could
> make such an argument, given sufficient latitude to characterize "empire",
> "impediment", and "regime of international law" :> ).
> 
> But then I am in a more heavily Rawlsian than anarchist phase at the moment;
> in fact, one of the things I mean to do is write a response to *Law of
> Peoples* from a broadly Chomskyean perspective, which would 1) establish the
> fact of US Empire and the necessity of Empire impeding the regime of
> international law, and 2) push at Rawls's notion of rational utopia to see
> if it could encompass an anarchist (for lack of a better term) "state". 
> 
> Best,
> Kendall Clark
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