The Role That State and Non-state Actors Play in International Law-Making - Essay Example

The standard response to a democratic legitimacy of the deficit in global governance is to propose measures designed to ‘inject the voice of individual citizens into the exclusively state-based structures.’ 1In the case of domestic law, certain factors such as constitutional provisions of that state can serve a as a framework for making the laws. The international law-making bodies such as the United Nations, codification bodies, diplomatic conferences, courts and NGOs are continually abrogating or amending the international laws and these subtle changes in International Law are not as observable as Domestic Law.

The role of constitutional courts is to be the ‘custodian of deliberative democracy’2. While certain principles of International Law are binding to a state, some of them are non-binding. “International society is an open society in the sense that it constantly interacts with domestic societies and its openness to domesticate societies is increasing.”3 The value of International law is greatly dependant on how a state perceives it to be. If a state deems a particular international law to be illegitimate, then the law would most probably be ineffective.

Modern democracies ‘are not populist but Constitutional’. 4 Therefore, the law-making body such as the UN tries to ensure that the laws are more open and nations participate in the law-making process. The international laws are also made keeping in mind the universality of the law and the speed at which the laws are to be implemented. “More fundamentally, interstate as well as intrastate conflicts often have been clashes between different societal and international normative orders- between a status quo order and a rival new order- and thus between the competing entitlements and rights that the antagonists each claim are inalienable under these respective contending orders.

”5 International law is a body of laws which bind nation-states together to global standards and values. International law can be broadly categorized into three disciplines: Public international Law (Primarily deals with the relationship between nations and international organizations.