Mark Jia (Georgetown University Law Center) has posted Law Power, University of Pennsylvania Journal of International Law (forthcoming) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
International relations scholars have long debated the military, economic, and cultural dimensions of national power. Yet in a new age of great power competition, we lack a general theory of national legal power comparable to these more familiar forms of national power. Drawing on legal scholarship across varied subject areas, this Article introduces a general concept of “law power”—a nation-state’s ability to use law to affect others to get what it wants. Law power can be soft, hard, or sharp, and can involve local, foreign, or international law. In today’s juridified geopolitics, law power is a leading form of national power. The Article makes three primary contributions. First, it shows how law power can reveal patterns of empowerment across a range of phenomena, from country’s use of foreign courts to its assertion of extraterritorial jurisdiction to its export of regulatory norms. Second, the Article raises understudied questions of law power resources, construction, and distribution—questions that scholars have long asked about military and economic power but have less often asked about law. Finally, the Article demonstrates the potential of law power as a lens for analyzing geopolitics, highlighting where rising powers are building law power and where existing powers are now overseeing its decline.
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