The Yearning for Unity and the Eternal Return of the Tower of Babel

Abstract

International lawyers frequently aspire to affirm the existence of international community and the presence of authority to speak on its behalf. However by forcing a hierarchical representation of legal values upon nations, which have not accepted them, international lawyers, and the politicians whom they advise, risk unleashing a whirlwind of violence. The myth or the Biblical story of the Tower of Babel, is a millenniums old warning of the presumption which can lie behind an apparently reasonable desire for global unity and harmony. I take as a welcome task assigned to me by the coordinator of this issue of the journal, to demonstrate that those who support the idea of international community fail to address the horizontal inter-state fragmentation of international society.