Law for leviathan : constitutional law, international law, and the state / Daryl Levinson.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 245-296) and index.

"An effective system of law must be able to authoritatively specify what the law is, and then get its subjects to follow it. Skeptics of international law have long questioned its ability to meet this standard, wondering, for instance, why a global superpower like the United States would bow to a rule of international law that disserved its interests, rather than changing, disregarding, or interpreting it away. We might equally wonder, however, why a President of the United States would choose to abide by constitutional limitations rather than dismiss them as "parchment barriers." While constitutionalists have paid less attention to these kinds of questions than their internationalist counterparts, the answers available to them are, not surprisingly, similar. This chapter describes how law for states can achieve some measure of settlement and compliance even in the absence of a crown-wearing, sword-wielding Leviathan standing above"--