Law-making and sources

International law is constantly under challenge as a legal system. Some scholars depict it as weak, mutable, unstable (Morgenthau 1948, 284), some as the mere product of states maximising their interests (Goldsmith and Posner 2005), some point to it as the framework of many mundane activities, for example as the basis of airline travel or international postal services (Henkin 1979, 29–30), while others explain its value as a ‘placemarker for justice’ or as a vehicle for the ‘regulative ideal of the international community’ (Koskenniemi 2007, 30). Perhaps because there is so much anxiety about whether international law can claim to be a branch of law, the topic of the making and sources of international law dominates most introductory works. It is as if pinning down the well-springs of international law will provide certainty and authority for the discipline.