Benvenisti: How the Power of the Idea Disempowered the Law: Understanding the Resilience of the Law of International Organisations

Eyal Benvenisti (Univ. of Cambridge - Law) has posted How the Power of the Idea Disempowered the Law: Understanding the Resilience of the Law of International Organisations. Here's the abstract:

Since the 1920s, international Organisations (IOs) were enthusiastically lauded as the ideal means to resolve international conflicts and promote global welfare. Sharing this enthusiasm, international and national courts adopted a deferential attitude toward IOs. The law they developed was premised on an unquestioning assumption that IOs’ subjection to legal accountability would be unnecessary and even counterproductive. In this Article, I delve into the ideology that inspired this law, and argue that the strong ideological support, expressed in all relevant academic disciplines, has lent seemingly scientific credibility to a law that relieved IOs from the requirements of the rule of law.