LAW AND DISORDER (PART I)
- Paul Hansbury
- Jan 14
- 5 min read
Updated: Jan 16
People are chattering about international law a lot of late. US President Donald Trump said that he 'doesn't need' international law, adding the sinister claim that the only limit on his power is 'my own morality, my own mind.'
Those words should send a shiver down everyone's spine in the wake of US intervention in Venezuela and intimations it could seize Greenland from Denmark through military force. Not to mention threats to Colombia, Mexico, Cuba and Iran. The US leader seems to be daring both allies and adversaries to prove he cannot do just as he chooses, to prove that international law means anything at all.
The responses to Trump's claims are intriguing. Many of his defenders pooh-pooh the notion that international law matters, how ever much his critics invoke it. At the same time, others among his supporters contort themselves in dubious arguments trying to defend actions in Venezuela in legal terms. His critics, meanwhile, either see his lawlessness as proof that international law is an impotent notion because the strong always run roughshod over it – or his lawlessness as proof of the necessity of international law to govern state leaders.
In other words, neither Trump's defenders nor his critics find any consensus on the status of international law. I will use this two-part post to point to the sources of international law, explain its limitations and indicate why we should care about Trump's cavalier attitude towards it.
Tying themselves in knots
