The Future of International Law amid the Structural and Substantive Challenges of the International System

Abstract

This article examines the major contemporary challenges confronting international law in its effort to regulate relations among the various actors within the international system. The continuous transformations—particularly in the structural configurations of the international order—have generated fundamental challenges for international law. These can be summarized in two main aspects.

The first concerns the challenges arising from structural shifts in the architecture of the international system, which have affected some of the long-established principles of international law, such as the nation-state and sovereignty, in addition to the law’s inability to adequately accommodate new actors emerging within the international arena.

The second aspect pertains to conceptual and practical challenges, foremost among them the Western intellectual dominance over the conceptualization and philosophical foundations of international law, as well as the United States’ antagonistic stance toward many of its norms and institutions.