The New Haven School in International Law: Interaction between Power and International Law Revisited

Nowadays, the International Community of States is regarded as the cornerstone of international relations studies. In such a community, the nature of international entities and mechanisms and the foundations for the commitment of States to international law are defined from a different perspective. The notion of International Community of States has had various reflections in the standpoint of legal schools and theories. In this respect, the so-called American New Haven School has illustrated the concepts of power, international law and the International Community of States differently by defining law as the outcome of a process in which the superpowers confront each other. The New Haven School is mostly motivated by the political realism theory, but with a new fancy garment that eventually results in the protection of American national interest. In this article, the proposed concepts in the New Haven School are first described and analyzed, and subsequently they are criticized. It is also discussed in this article that the application of New Haven School in international relations brings injustice to the rule-making process among States in the International Community.