PAIL Institute Publications

PAIL Institute Monograph Series

Improving Compliance with International Law

Author(s): Fisher, Roger

Hardcover - 370 pages (1981)
ISBN: 0-8139-0859-0; LC: 80-14616

Price: US $52.00

---

About This Publication

Complying with international law can become as automatic as stopping for a red light. This book tells how. It is concerned with the problem of bringing law to bear on governments — the problem of applying to nation states "those wise restraints that make men free."

Roger Fisher considers first the traditional approach to international compliance. For most reformers international law has been merely a set of moral directives hard to enforce; the perceived solution has been an international police force strong enough to impose the law upon any country. That approach is designed with the big problems in mind; war, aggression, and other blatant violations of international law.

But Fisher points out that the law's greatest talent lies in dealing with questions when they are small. Law enforcement should be more than, and quite different from, internationally organized coersion. He directs attention to the problem of "ordinary" violations of international law by governments and preferred ways of dealing with them. He argues that it is impossible to design an international law enforcement system capable of dealing with the worst contingencies, for among such contingencies are various kinds of disloyalties within the system itself. The primary task of the law is to deal with disorder in an orderly way — to avoid a maximum confrontation, not to win it.

To this end Fisher recommends that laws be written so that they are compliance-prone, that reciprocity and enlightened self-interest be used as levers, and that international regulations be woven into the fabric of already existing domestic codes. Violations should be treated as disputes and should lead in each case to a specific decision about what ought to happen next. Fisher discusses the role of domestic courts and procedures, the ideal relationship between international institutions and domestic courts, and the best means of making international institutions acceptable to governments.

Lawyers and government officials will be interested in this book, as will laymen concerned with the increasing disorder of international relations. An international legal system that has a greater impact on official behavior is crucial. Roger Fisher offers us a convincing approach to improving compliance.

---

About The Author(s)

Roger Fisher is Williston Professor of Law at Harvard University, where he has taught since 1958. His work has focused on the process by which people and governments deal with their differences. He is currently director of the Harvard Negotiation Project and teaches international law, negotiation, and coping with international conflict.

---

Reviews

Hardy Cross Dillard, Judge, International Court of Justice
Early in his well-documented book on Improving Compliance with International Law, Professor Fisher tells us that his object is to explore, on the basis of an analysis of their current behavior patterns, how governments may be induced to comply better with legal and other norms. This is part of his larger concern, manifested over many years, with the processes for coping with international conflict.

He has accomplished his purpose admirably. By avoiding a highly theoretical discussion of law and concentrating on its practical uses, his book constitutes at once an innovative contribution to the burgeoning literature on international law and a distinctive addition to the well-known series on The Procedural Aspects of International Law of which it forms a part.

---

Availability

Improving Compliance with International Law is available from:

William S. Hein & Co., Inc.
1285 Main Street
Buffalo, NY 14209

(716) 882-2600
(800) 828-7571 (toll free)
(716) 883-8100 (fax)
e-mail: mail@wshein.com
website: http://www.wshein.com/
Hein Item #: 306610

Improving Compliance with International Law is also available from Amazon.com.

---

Table of Contents

	Editor's Foreword			v
	Acknowledgments			vii
Introduction	Law as a Means of Making Governments Behave			1
	I	General Approach		3
	II	The Multiple Objectives of Compliance		20
Part I.	First-Order Compliance Causing Respect for Standing Rules			35
A.	Using Deterrence
	III	Deterrence Against Governments		39
	IV	Deterrence Against Individuals		73
B.	Nondeterrent Techniques for Causing Respect for Standing Rules
	V	Compliance as a Function of the Rule		105
	VI	Reciprocity and Enlightened Self-Interest		127
	VII	Internal Forces for First-Order Compliance		141
Part II.	Second-Order Compliance Coping with Apparent Noncompliance			163
	VIII	Who Raises the Question?		167
	IX	Use of Domestic Courts and Procedures		212
	X	Blending International Institutions into Domestic Law		236
	XI	Making International Institutions Acceptable		247
	XII	Determinations Against Whom?		273
	XIII	The Content of a Decision		301
	XIV	Following Up a Determination		321
	XV	Where Do We Go from Here?		350
	Analytical Table of Contents			353
	Index			361