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Chicago Journal of International Law

Abstract

Does international governance threaten to crowd out American democracy? Many public figures and scholars think so. The street theater in Seattle last fall and Senator Dole's effort to establish a national tribunal to review World Trade Organization ("WTO") dispute resolution decisions both attest to the extent of the concern. As international institutions burgeon in number and significance, the residuum of authority left in our national government seems an ever diminishing domain. Extrapolating into the future, one can envision a time when the United States retains only as much sovereignty as, say, the members of the European Union or the States in our own federal system. The diminution of sovereignty brings with it a loss of democracy, as the distance between citizens and the institutions that make the most meaningful decisions grows greater. I take this concern seriously but believe its popular formulation is too simplistic and somewhat misplaced. International governance entails not only the formal institutions and explicit agreements that generate what I have called the "new international law." It also embraces a system of formulating and imposing norms on state and individual behavior that operates outside of any publicly accountable institution. A debate recently has arisen in the United States over the legitimacy of customary international law, with fierce arguments on each side. One dimension of this debate is the tension between American democracy and the adoption of customary norms through the courts.

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