Abstract:
Global legalism is the view that world government is not a practicable approach to
global collective action problems but that these problems are nonetheless susceptible to
legal solutions. This position is paradoxical: within nation states, government is
normally thought to be a precondition of law. This paper argues that global legalism
rests on an incorrect understanding of how international law functions, and implicitly
relies on a false analogy to domestic legalism, a form of legalism that flourishes in
states that have legalistic cultures. Because the conditions for legalism do not exist at
the international level, global legalism provides false hope and poor guidance for
international law.
