ABSTRACT
The schism between hard-core classicists and realists has added dimensions and implications. Classicists aspire to identify and publicize a qualitatively distinct corpus of norms for evaluating state behavior and to maintain a system of procedural norms for modification of the behavioral ones as alterations occur in the consensus among states about the requirements of international order. The rapid activation of a Human Rights Commission does, of course, support the view that the Charter's references to human rights were not wholly cosmetic. The reports of Amnesty International and other highly credible organizations engaged in the defense of human rights document widespread torture in a large number of countries that appear blissfully unaware of their vulnerability to legitimate intervention. The US interventions in Panama and in Grenada are cases in point. Neither could be characterized as a response to mass murder, slavery, or even widespread and systematized torture.
