ABSTRACT
A great distance, both emotional and intellectual, separates the world of those who adhere to moral decisionism from any conceivable legal theory. Lawyers are not romantic as a rule. It is therefore a different sort of decisionism that one finds among those radicals who, during the years of the New Deal, became the leading spokesmen of legal realism. The most prevalent form of decisionism today is not concerned with domestic politics. It is rather centered on the all-important realm of foreign policy. The realism of the moment is no longer legal, but political. Politics should be a matter of decisions, taken by those who have the power to make them stick. The greatest danger to success in politics is not just indecisiveness, but a faith in legalism, in the belief that rules of international law, or of personal morality, have any application to power relations.
