The Decay of the International Rule of Law Project (1990–2015)

The chapter challenges the idea that the 1990s are the beginning of a golden era of the international rule of law. Rather they are interpreted as the climax of a phase of a US-dominated international institutional system and a phase of relatively uncontested Western hegemony which was often realized through transnational institutions but which was not necessarily created by international law. However, many institutional characteristics of this era conflicted or continued to conflict fundamentally with central elements of the original early twentieth-century rule of law project in international relations which subscribed to compulsory jurisdiction, rule-based collective security, sovereign equality of states, and codification. The United States and its Western partners missed out on the opportunity to use the ‘unipolar’ moment in modern world history to eventually realize and entrench such a fair rule of law system in international relations.