Enforcement of International Law
How international law is enforced without a world police force, and why compliance is higher than skeptics assume.
The Enforcement Puzzle
The most common critique of international law is that it lacks enforcement. There is no world police force, no global government with the power to compel obedience. When Russia invades Ukraine or a country tortures its citizens, no authority can simply arrest the violators. This leads many people, including some legal scholars, to question whether international law is really 'law' at all.
But this critique confuses enforcement with compliance. In domestic legal systems, most people follow the law most of the time not because they fear the police but because they accept the law as legitimate, because compliance is in their interest, or because social norms reinforce legal ones. The same dynamics operate internationally. States comply with the vast majority of international law the vast majority of the time. Diplomatic immunity is respected. Treaties are generally honored. Trade rules are followed. The violations that make headlines are dramatic precisely because they are exceptions to the norm.