Anti-Climacus

ON RELATIVE NORMATIVITY IN INTERNATIONAL LAW: A few things from my response paper that I happened to like:

[The concept of obligations erga omnes*] can be understood in two ways: either it is intended to create a narrow right of standing, so that any state can hold a state violating its obligations legally accountable. But if the stress of the linguistic construction is placed on obligation, it raises the possibility of universal, exceptionless norms such as we have been discussing. If true, then it gives actors the ability to think not so much of their obligations towards others, but the obligations others have towards them—hence obligations erga ipsum**. Do the conditions of jus cogens*** allow states (or other participants in the system) to think primarily in terms of what is owed to them rather than the role they ought to play in the international system...?

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To put the question another way: suppose a obligation erga omnes is recognized or established, but I as a state actor do not want to support it, not because I disagree with the moral aim or its need to be some kind of legal principle, but I believe a more narrowly tailored norm will meet with more compliance more readily, leaving the possibility of strengthening the norm in the future (it may be useful in this context to think about how early 20th-century Hague conferences laid the groundwork for more comprehensive international law governing war). Would it be possible under jus cogens to take such a position, or would the strong obligation be imposed on me anyway?

*toward all
**toward itself
***i.e., the creation of universal, exceptionless norms (this is my reading, probably slightly prejudicial)