The Concept of Legitimacy in International Law

Abstract

The paper that I circulated for today’s meeting built on an article that I wrote in the American Journal of International Law back in 1999. At that time, relatively little had been written about the issue of legitimacy by international lawyers, except for Tom Frank’s pioneering book¹ and some more topical papers such as David Caron’s paper analysing the legitimacy of the Security Council.² In the last decade, there has been an explosion of interest in the problem of international legitimacy — what one writer has called a veritable renaissance in international legitimacy talk.3 This, I think, reflects the growing authority and importance of international institutions. When international institutions were relatively weak, legitimacy was not a pressing issue. But as they have become more influential, and as the need has grown for international institutions with greater authority to address collective problems such as climate change, this has prompted more questions about what will make such institutions legitimate.