Sandra Raponi

Critics of international law argue that it is not really law because it lacks a supranational system of coercive sanctions. International legal scholars and lawyers primarily refute this by demonstrating that international law is in fact enforced, albeit in decentralized and less coercive ways. I will focus instead on the presumption behind this skeptical view—the idea that law must be coercively enforced. First, I argue that coercive enforcement is not conceptually necessary for law or legal obligations. Second, I consider the claim that coercive enforcement is nonetheless necessary for instrumental reasons. I argue that while physical coercion is instrumentally useful for increasing compliance in the domestic case, this is less effective and more problematic in the international case. What then is essential and distinctive about law, and what would increase the effectiveness of international law? First, international law needs to be generally accepted as binding by states, officials, and other agents; and second, international legal rules should be determinatively interpreted and applied by authoritative, adjudicative, and administrative institutions.

Although Kant argues that a world republic with coercive public law is the only rational way to secure a lawful cosmopolitan condition, he states that it is an unachievable ideal, and he proposes a voluntary, non-coercive federation of states as a substitute. While some scholars have criticized Kant for moving away from this ideal due merely to pragmatic considerations, I argue that his rejection of a coercive world republic is based on his conception of state sovereignty and what is required for a lawful condition. I consider how we can institutionalize a lawful condition between states without a coercive world republic in ways that go beyond Kant’s voluntary federation. I also consider how we can resolve this dilemma in Kant’s account to support a federal world republic. (Published online first on June 16, 2014).

I argue that recognizing a human right to adequate food and enforcing it as a legal right is an important way to promote and ensure sustainable food security. I consider objections that have been raised against subsistence rights and socio-economic rights, including the argument that such rights are not feasible, that they are not justiciable, and that they are too amorphous—that it is not clear what is required to fulfill these rights and by whom. I defend the right to adequate food against these objections by considering how this right has been interpreted and applied in international law and how it has been protected in other domestic legal systems. I analyze different dimensions of the right to adequate food and I apply these to recent issues concerning sustainable food security in the United States, such as food deserts.