Course Section | Columbia Law School

Section Description Provided by Instructor

The course compares a variety of proposals that have been advanced to promote world order. We begin with traditional conceptions of the balance of power among independent states and then explore arrangements designed to produce increasing forms of international and world order. These include liberal internationalism, collective security through the League Covenant and the United Nations Charter, John Rawls's Law of Peoples and various other contemporary models of compliance with international law, including WTO dispute settlement, regional integration, global governance networks and global democratization.

In addition to assessing the particular merits and limitations of these visions of world order, we will examine the underlying principles of international ethics and institutional design that characterize these efforts to establish rules for the globe.