Constitutional Law, International Law, and the State
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 14 February 2024
⏱️ 58 minutes
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Summary
Many international law scholars are skeptical about the efficacy of international law to shape state behavior—and even international law's reality as law—because it lacks a centralized hierarchical legislature, executive branch, or judiciary. In his new book, “Law for Leviathan: Constitutional Law, International Law, and the State,” Daryl Levinson of NYU Law School challenges this conception of international law by arguing that it is structurally similar to domestic constitutional law in its ability to constrain states and in its strategies for doing so.
Jack Goldsmith sat down with Levinson to discuss the challenge of regulating the state through both international law and constitutional law and what constitutional law theory can learn from international relations theory about how this happens. They also discussed how IR balance of power theory is like Madison's conception of constitutionalism, the implications for his theory for understanding how to hold states accountable for illegal action, and how to think about these ideas in light of the ostensible waning of state power in the modern era.
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| 1:07.0 | We shouldn't attribute to states the personified notion that they have interests of their own or desires to |
| 1:18.2 | maximize their own power or wealth or anything else. States are just vehicles for people |
| 1:25.0 | to collectively accomplish things. |
| 1:27.4 | And if what those people want to accomplish |
| 1:30.1 | is better accomplish by cooperating with other states, by trading with other states, |
| 1:35.2 | then that's what states will do. There's no third thing like a personified Leviathan that is pursuing its own interests apart from the |
| 1:45.1 | interests of the people who make up the state. I'm Jack Goldsmith and this is |
| 1:50.0 | the Law Fair Podcast February 14, 2024. the law and even international law's reality as law because it lacks a centralized |
| 2:05.2 | hierarchical legislature, executive branch, or judiciary. In his new book, |
| 2:10.7 | Law for Leviathan, Constitutional Law, Constitutional Law, and the state, |
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