The Redundancy of Soft Law
![handle is hein.journals/nordic65 and id is 179 raw text is: * Nordic Journal of International Law 65: 167-182, 1996. 167
@ 1996 Kluwer Law International. Printed in the Netherlands.
The Redundancy of Soft Law
JAN KLABBERS
Lecturer in International Law, Amsterdam School of International Relations; Research
Fellow, Foundation for Law and Public Administration (REOB), The Hague
The Redundancy of Soft Law
Some two-and-a-half centuries ago, British philosopher David Hume wrote a
passionate plea for recognition of what might be called the binary character
of law. Having noted that vice and virtue may come in various shades of grey
and 'run insensibly into each other', he dismissed such a notion when it came
to law:
.... it is certain that rights, and obligations, and property, admit of no such
insensible gradation, but that man either has a full and perfect property,
or none at all; and is either entirely obliged to perform any action, or lies
under no manner of obligation.'
And he proceeded by claiming that '[h]alf rights and obligations, which seem
so natural in common life' are, when it comes to applying the law, nothing
else but 'perfect absurdities'.2
Hume's words carry a distinct flavour of timeliness when read in the light of
present-day debates concerning soft law. Since the early 1970s, international
lawyers appear to have convinced themselves that international law is not
simply a binary matter, dividing things into rubrics such as legal or illegal,
binding or non-binding, but is, rather, characterized by an 'infinite variety' *3
Instead of a binary division into black and white, there is, so the thesis runs,
a large grey zone in between, occupied by those documents and instruments
which are not clearly law, but cannot be said to be legally insignificant either.
'Originally in his A treatise of human nature, Book III, part II, chapter VI, reproduced in
Stuart D. Warner & Donald W. Livingston (eds.), David Hume: Political writings, Hackett
Publishing Company, Indianapolis, 1994, at 43.
21bid., at 45.
3 The term is borrowed from Richard R. Baxter, International law in her infinite variety',
29 ICLQ (International and Comparative Law Quarterly) (1980), 549-566.](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/nordic65&div=15&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
What Is HeinOnline?
Contact us for annual subscription options:
Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?
profiles profiles most
The Redundancy of Soft Law
Contact us for annual subscription options:
Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?
profiles profiles most