America, Defender of Democratic Legitimacy? James C. Hathaway Full text available: PDF format * Abstract American exceptionalism - a belief that the United States has a unique mission to lead the world, but ought logically to be exempt from the rules it promotes - is at the root of much of the American academy's effort to rationalize the US government's increasing rejection of multilateralism as the cornerstone of modern public international law. Even American scholars who disagree fundamentally on the problems with multilateralism (Kenneth Anderson arguing that it favours anti-democratic intervention by unelected NGOs, Michael Reisman asserting that it privileges elitist state-based lawmaking in the face of more democratic non-state `lawmaking' processes) can agree on the solution: more unilateralism by powerful states, particularly by the United States. In this critique, James Hathaway contends that the amorphous law-as-policy depictions of the problems with multilateralism disguise a determination to equate valid international law with the priorities of powerful states, and that the presumed solution of American unilateralism reflects a mistaken belief that the United States can be assumed always to operate on the basis of principle-derived autopilot. * The free viewer (Acrobat Reader) for PDF file is available at the Adobe Systems.
	© 1990-2004 European Journal of International Law All comments and suggestions should be sent to webmaster This site is part of the Academy of European Law online, a joint partnership of the Jean Monnet Center at NYU School of Law and the Academy of European Law at the European University Institute. This file was last modified: Tuesday, October 14, 2003 01:35PM