legaltheoryblog.com
Keitner on State Responsibility as Myth and Legend
Chimène Keitner (UC Davis School of Law), State Responsibility as Myth and Legend, 120 Am. J. Int’l L. (forthcoming) on SSRN. Here is the abstract: This essay reviews Alan Tzvika Nissel’s Merchants of Legalism: A History of State Responsibility (1870-1960) (2024) and Allison Powers (Useche), Arbitrating Empire: United States Expansion and the Transformation of International Law (2024). It approaches contemporary international law as ‘part myth, part legend.’ It is part myth, because understandings of international law promulgated largely by Global North countries rely on shared fantasies about a set of core values underlying the post-World War II international order.
![“When Congress grants the power to impose tariffs, it does so clearly and with careful constraints.” Learning Res., 146 S. Ct. at 644. Separation of powers concerns thus require the court to carefully parse those constraints and give them full effect, because “the President enjoys no inherent authority to impose tariffs during peacetime.” Id. at 638; see also id. at 639 (“‘[B]oth separation of powers principles and a practical
understanding of legislative intent’ suggested Congress would not have delegated ‘highly consequential power’ through ambiguous language.” (plurality opinion) (alteration in original) (quoting West Virginia v. EPA, 597 U.S. 697, 723–24 (2022)));24](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:gu7tahhw2vef6dy62q6j5cnc/bafkreifx3f4knuhxx5vnsk6k4l2evyjrdmzp2psuatq3k3ftfqzjzxpchy)
