Shades of Grey: Soft Law and the Validity of Public International Law

Abstract:     
Soft law is often seen as a way to overcome certain problems of legitimacy in international law, notably the weaknesses of a voluntaristic conception of international law’s validity. Other perceived benefits of soft law include flexibility, speed of adoption and modification, and even effectiveness. Yet soft law is seen by others as a threat to law, because it effaces the border between law and politics. This paper explores different approaches to the boundary between law and not-law which seek both to maintain this boundary and to reconceptualise it in a way that better anchors the validity of international legal rules.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 29

Keywords: Soft law, validity of international law, internal morality of law, autopoietic theory, publicness of law

Accepted Paper Series