The Disciplines of International Law and Policy

This article considers the idea that the professional and intellectual disciplines which have developed in the United States to advance insight into international affairs also have characteristic blind spots and biases which leave professionals and intellectuals working within them more sanguine about the status quo than they might otherwise be. I am particularly interested in blind spots and bias which emerge from interactions among the disciplines of public international law, international economic law, comparative law, and international relations. Although internationalists in the United states working in these disciplines have broadly divergent methodologies and political ideologies, they share a sensibility which narrows the range of concerns and the scope of political possibilities which seem plausible to professionals and intellectuals concerned with international law and policy.