Vol. 12 No. 3 (2025): Dubious problems in international law: legal theory meets international law

For decades, international law focused primarily on relations between international actors, mainly states but also, to some extent, state-like entities or organizations. Legal theory, operating within this narrow view of international law, emphasized general questions concerning the validity of international legal norms and the sources from which they derive their binding force. Voluntarist approaches to international law, once highly influential, posited that the source of international legal norms lay in the “self-limitation” of states. Whereas Georg Jellinek (1880: 48–49) viewed this Selbstbeschränkung as an expression of sovereign will, John Austin (1995: 171) insisted that it resulted in international law not being truly “law.” According to Austin, there is no supreme sovereign among international actors capable of issuing sanction-backed commands. Norms contained in international treaties are therefore “laws improperly so called” (Austin, 1995: 123), stemming from voluntary agreements accepted by the parties solely on the basis of moral principles and custom