Jeremy A. Rabkin - Böcker

This classic publication exposes the efforts of the environmental movement to undermine individual freedom by promoting the growth of authoritarian and unaccountable global institutions. Over the course of the past fifteen years, environmental organisations have become increasingly obsessed with 'global' environmental issues, such as climate change, ozone depletion and biodiversity loss. They claim that these issues affect everyone on the planet and necessitate global agreements. In response to lobbying by these environmental organisations, governments around the world have signed up to many international treaties, committing their respective countries to limiting emissions of substances such as CFCs and carbon dioxide. Like other political agreements, the global treaties involved considerable 'horse-trading', with governments of developing countries only agreeing to sign up if the governments of developed countries would commit to transferring funds to them.Even so, developing country governments have resisted subsequent attempts of make them sign up to specific limits on emissions of carbon dioxide, and production of CFCs continues apace in China, India, Russia, and other developing countries. As pressure grows for the development of binding restrictions on the production and emission of certain chemicals, nations are likely gradually to cede sovereignty to supranational organisations such as the United Nations, with policies ever more dominated by the few organisations (environmental, labour and others) who are accredited as Non Governmental Organisations with the UN. The evidence strongly suggests that the resultant global governance will be undemocratic and policies will be based on dogma not sound science.

What authority does international law really have for the United States? When and to what extent should the United States participate in the international legal system? This forcefully argued book by legal scholar Jeremy Rabkin provides an insightful new look at this important and much-debated question. Americans have long asked whether the United States should join forces with institutions such as the International Criminal Court and sign on to agreements like the Kyoto Protocol. Rabkin argues that the value of international agreements in such circumstances must be weighed against the threat they pose to liberties protected by strong national authority and institutions. He maintains that the protection of these liberties could be fatally weakened if we go too far in ceding authority to international institutions that might not be zealous in protecting the rights Americans deem important. Similarly, any cessation of authority might leave Americans far less attached to the resulting hybrid legal system than they now are to laws they can regard as their own. Law without Nations? traces the traditional American wariness of international law to the basic principles of American thought and the broader traditions of liberal political thought on which the American Founders drew: only a sovereign state can make and enforce law in a reliable way, so only a sovereign state can reliably protect the rights of its citizens.It then contrasts the American experience with that of the European Union, showing the difficulties that can arise from efforts to merge national legal systems with supranational schemes. In practice, international human rights law generates a cloud of rhetoric that does little to secure human rights, and in fact, is at odds with American principles, Rabkin concludes. A challenging and important contribution to the current debates about the meaning of multilateralism and international law, Law without Nations? will appeal to a broad cross-section of scholars in both the legal and political science arenas.