There’s now a complete style of scholarship through which worldwide legal professionals ruminate on the disastrous state of the world – Philippa Webb and Lydia Kim not too long ago did an excellent survey of it right here on the weblog. Pushed partly by a worry of lacking out on all of the angst, and partly by the necessity for self-therapy, I too thought I ought to be a part of this unhappy little celebration with an essay referred to as Dystopian Worldwide Regulation (obtainable in draft right here). The essay is forthcoming in a particular problem of the AJIL, which can include evaluate essays of the type one would possibly discover within the New York Evaluate of Books, relatively than in a conventional educational journal.
The essay is partly diagnostic. In my opinion, the best hazard to the present world order comes from the collapse of democracies from inside and from rising authoritarianism globally. This phenomenon, I submit, has little to do with the substantive content material of worldwide legislation as such, similar to the rise of totalitarianism within the first half of the 20th century was not meaningfully attributable to worldwide legislation because it then was. The failure of the authorized system is considered one of omission, of incapacity to stop. A treatment, if a treatment is to be discovered, is just not in additional (higher) legislation. The essay additionally argues that the collapse we’re wittnessing (and it’s a collapse, not only a run-of-the-mill disaster) is just not one of many rule of legislation, which isn’t one thing that the worldwide authorized system, or most home authorized methods, have ever attained. The rule of legislation is certainly collapsing, however solely in these few societies fortunate sufficient to have had it within the first place (and, I repeat, this isn’t the expertise of the nice majority of individuals alive as we speak or up to now). And there’s a broader, extra overwhelming collapse of dedication to worldwide legislation, a collapse which (if we’re fortunate) will probably be solely partial – however nonetheless transformative.Â
Lastly, the essay additionally examines the expertise of being a global lawyer in an more and more authoritarian world. This isn’t an train in creativeness, however a lived actuality, for a lot of of our colleagues who haven’t had the nice fortune of dwelling and dealing in free societies. A few of their dilemmas will more and more develop into intimately acquainted to legal professionals in failing democracies. Ought to one waft and, out of ideology or opportunism, develop into complicit within the wrongs of the brand new regime? Say by writing a properly footnoted piece or two justifying some extrajudicial executions or a little bit of aggression and ethnic cleaning right here and there? Or keep unsullied, however silent and cowed? Or battle again, or try and so, however at an ever greater value? Or try and to migrate someplace – an possibility that’s already obtainable just for some, and can develop into more and more harder sooner or later? Such decisions are usually not genuinely new for a lot of colleagues, and they’re after all not confined to (educational) legal professionals. However numerous us who had by no means dreamed of being confronted with such decisions will quickly must make them.
Listed here are some snippets from the essay’s introduction – feedback most welcome:
In 2025, we worldwide legal professionals – and the authorized system through which we function – are standing on the precipice. That issues are past dangerous shouldn’t be unsure. This isn’t some run-of-the-mill disaster of the type that worldwide legal professionals enjoy, as Hilary Charlesworth warned us to not do. That is collapse, or one thing collapse-adjacent. And we aren’t alone, right here on the precipice. Everybody else is right here too. Some don’t suppose issues are as catastrophic as they first appear. Some are delighted with how issues are going (although there are few worldwide legal professionals amongst them). Some are despairing (and right here the worldwide legal professionals are legion). Everybody’s anxious.
I, too, am anxious, standing right here on the precipice. I see the looming disaster, for our world and for our area. The disaster is already right here. It’s in Gaza, in Sudan, in Ukraine. It’s within the international decline of democracy and rising authoritarianism, together with in the USA, the linchpin of the present worldwide order. The query is how large this disaster goes to get, and what is going to come after it. And that we simply don’t know. We will’t know, standing, as we’re, right here on the precipice.
On this essay, I want to think about, as a global lawyer, the place the worldwide authorized system might go as we go away this precipice behind. The world we’ll reside in in ten or twenty years’ time will in some ways be worse than once I write this. The worldwide authorized system will probably be worse with it.
However dystopias are usually not inevitable. The place we go from this precipice, and simply how dangerous issues actually find yourself being, is contingent. It is dependent upon what we select to do, or not do. Anybody who has lived by a dictatorship – and I’ve lived by three (sort of) – will know that the nice guys don’t all the time win, however the dangerous guys don’t both. There are forks within the highway, selections and decisions that folks make. The selections and decisions of worldwide legal professionals are removed from essentially the most consequential, however they’re ours.
I’ve chosen to interact with two books – each written by non-lawyers, for a common, mass market viewers – as a place to begin for discussing the precipice on which we stand. The primary is a traditional: Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism, the primary version of which was revealed in 1951. The second is of more moderen classic: Anne Applebaum’s Autocracy, Inc., revealed in 2024.
Arendt’s work has provoked many years of scholarly commentary. She has additionally, for good causes, skilled a surge in reputation in recent times, in response to the unravelling of democracy in a considerable variety of states. Applebaum’s work is, after all, not canonical in the identical approach. However, regardless of their variations, and the seven many years’ hole between them, there are some necessary commonalities between these two books. Each resulted from an effort by students, who are usually not conventional lecturers however essayists writing books with a well-liked enchantment, to make sense of the unconventional transformation of the world round them. Each books have been written on a precipice. Each are intensely private. And each have classes to impart – for worldwide legal professionals and for all residents – classes that must be absorbed.
