ABSTRACT
International law thus serves, both internationally and domestically, as a basis for a rhetoric of recrimination directed at the United States. Those who disapprove of a President's actions on the merits, but who fear they may prove popular, can transform the dispute from one about substance to one about legality. The major difficulty with international law is that it converts what are essentially problems of international morality, as defined by a particular political community, into arguments about law that are largely drained of morality. The law of gravity describes a force in the natural universe. The law of supply and demand is an observation about human behaviour in markets. To be international, rules about the use of force between nations must be acceptable to regimes that operate on different–often contradictory–moral premises. The rules themselves must not express a preference for freedom over tyranny or for elections over domestic violence as the means of coming to power.
