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3 J. Int'l Disp. Settlement 1 (2012)

handle is hein.journals/jloildte3 and id is 1 raw text is: 



Journal of International Dispute Settlement, Vol. 3, No. 1 (2012), pp. 1-5
doi:10.1093/jnlids/ids001



                          EDITORIAL


                          King Rex II




Let me  start with an allegory. King Rex, having failed eight times to make law
for his subjects, as Lon   Fuller beautifully recounted in his famous   tale,'
reasoned it was time for him to pursue other ideals in life. He decided to marry
his new girlfriend, who had just divorced her second husband and was  leading
a life that was more   often characterized as interesting than as particularly
morally virtuous. Rex's ministers, eager to seize the occasion to oust a king so
bungling when   it came to lawmaking, evoked  her solecisms and suggested he
abdicate, arguing that it was not  appropriate for his subjects to be morally
inspired by such a queen.  Tired of the complications and  of his subjects, he
soon  signed the instruments of abdication and was free.
  His much  younger  brother succeeded to the throne. He chose for himself the
name  Rex  II. Freshly out of law school, where he had become infatuated with
arbitration, he decided  that arbitration was the  instrument  he needed   to
succeed where  his older brother, whose zeal for reformation he shared, had so
spectacularly failed: making  law  for his  subjects. And  with  such  grand
ambitions he  got to work.
  His first act was to announce that he would repeal all existing rules and draft
a new  code. But before he could actually implement his plan, delegation after
delegation of  international arbitrators-an important  crowd  for the  young
king-requested   an audience.  He  soon became   aware  of the fact that they
wanted   to keep  the multitude  of existing codes, because  they  could not
conceive of working  with fewer rules ('more rules are better than less', they
chanted in the royal gardens). At the same time, though, they wanted the rules
to be both  more  adaptable to the particulars of individual situations and be
given 'transnational' meaning, so as to please their clients. Rex II, a prudent
king,  comprehended   that this was  too  ambitious  a  plan and  thought  it
preferable to leave it aside.
  After  a considerable  time spent  brooding  over what  he  viewed  as  the
delegations' indelicacies, he decided, first, that he was  annoyed  with  the
arbitrators, who were not as empyrean as he had been  told in law school, and,

   1 L Fuller, The Morality of Law (rev edn, Yale University Press 1969), section entitled 'Eight Ways to Fail to
Make Law', 33-38.
© The Author 2012. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions,
please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com

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