PO102 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: North American Free Trade Agreement, Collective Action, Human Rights Watch
Document Summary
What is international law: the set of rules that countries follow when dealing with each other! The sources of international law: tradition, agreements signed by states. General principles of fairness and justice which are applied universally in legal systems around the world: ex. Illegal because under custom, iraq and kuwait had been living in peace (breach of custom) Illegal because of the general principle related to aggression and territory annexation: violated sovereignty. If a state offends, the other state will respond with the same behaviour: tit for tat, ex. Not killing pows, not using chemical weapons, trade disputes. Collective action: several countries coming together against one country to produce some kind of punishment, ex. Invasion of kuwait, the un came together and responded to it: only works really well if you have a large number of countries and no defenders.
