Originally from World Arbitration And Mediation Review (WAMR)

Preview Page

I. INTRODUCTION
Many lawyers involved in international arbitration will be
unaware – perhaps fortunately so – of the fierce debates that roil
in parts of the international law academy regarding some
fundamental questions. What is international law? Is it law? If it
is, what makes it so? What theoretical approaches are best suited
to addressing these sorts of questions? So, the debates drag on
among positivists, crits, realists, modernists, post-modernists . . . .
In this sometimes challenging book, Professor Tai-Heng Cheng
seeks to move beyond these debates, attempting instead
something quite different and quite ambitious. Cheng sets out to
erect a theoretical framework for use by international decision
makers, including arbitrators, in confronting international
problems involving legal principles. For Cheng, the perennial
debate whether “international law is law” asks the wrong
question (p. 2), leading to long and sterile exchanges. Instead, the
real issue is what decision-makers should do about international
law in the specific factual context of specific problems.
This is not a book for casual bedtime reading. It does not deal
directly with practical aspects of lawyering. The lines of
argument and some key vocabulary may be unfamiliar to lawyers
outside the academy. Lawyers with a positivist frame of mind
may not be amused. Cheng has breathed deeply of the air of New
Haven,1 and it shows. This is a policy-oriented view of