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1 J. Int'l L & Int'l Rel. 49 (2004-2005)
Identifying the Source and Nature of a State's Political Obligation towards International Law

handle is hein.journals/jilwirl1 and id is 51 raw text is: Identifying the Source and Nature of a State's Political Obligation Towards International Law SHIRLEY V. SCOTT* It is not 'new' to be interested in the relationship between international law and its political context. It is not even 'new' to theorize connections between the two-consider Abram Chayes's 1974 functionalist analysis of the role of international law in the Cuban Missile Crisis,' or the work of the New Haven scholars. In seeking to respond to the query as to what I thought had been achieved through the interdisciplinary dialogue of the last ten to fifteen years, I have avoided the temptation to summarize the history of inter-disciplinary scholarship or to offer a panoramic overview of recent publications in the field. I have instead taken as my stepping-off point literature in key mainstream journals of both disciplines written on the 'core' issue of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. If interdisciplinary enquiry has really 'gotten somewhere' over the last ten to fifteen years, it is here, at the heart of each discipline, that its presence should be making an impact. A mere glance through several mainstream journals, including The International and Comparative Law Quarterly and the European Journal of International Relations, suffices to demonstrate that linking politics and law is an accepted mainstream activity in both disciplines (though this is less apparent in the policy-oriented Foreign Affairs). The military action against Iraq has been widely recognized as constituting 'one of the few events of the UN Charter period holding the potential for fundamental transformation, or possibly even destruction, of the system of law governing the use of force that had evolved during the twentieth century.'2 The basic legal question posed by the use of force against Iraq has therefore been that as to the impact, if any, of the United States-led military action on the specific content of the law of the use of force. Precisely because those lawyers undertaking black-letter, positivist, international legal analysis are not, by definition, investigating political context,3 however, the vast majority of writings linking the politics with Senior Lecturer in International Relations, University of New South Wales (Sydney). I Abram Chayes, The Cuban Missile Crisis (London: Oxford University Press, 1974). 2 Lori Fisler Damrosch & Bernard H. Oxman, 'Editor's Introduction', Agora: Future Implications ofthe Iraq Conflict (2003) 97 Am. J. Int'l L. 553 at 553. 3 As encapsulated in Vaughan Lowe's comment that lawyers must 'explain what was the reason for using force against Iraq. Not the elusive motive- oil, or whatever has been the motive for invading Iraq ... but the reason, which, if translated into a norm with legal force would become the justification which might be invoked in future by the US, the UK, or any other State in similar circumstances.' 'The Iraq Crisis: What Now?' (2003)

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