ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates, and attempts a preliminary adjudication of, the conflict between two conceptions of customary international law and the rival conceptions of international society they presuppose. Weil's critique of relative normativity is framed as a pathology of the international normative system. In the Nicaragua case a majority of the World Court held, inter alia, that the United States had breached its obligations to Nicaragua under customary international law not to use force against another state and not to interfere in the affairs of another state. The majority found that the principle of non-intervention, which 'involves the right of every sovereign State to conduct its affairs without outside interference', is 'part and parcel of customary international law' even though 'examples of trespass against this principle are not infrequent'. The plausibility of Weil's anti-pluralism charge, and the way in which he presses it, turns mainly on his adoption of a 'statist' conception of international society.
