Date of Award

5-2026

Language

English

Document Type

Honors Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

Philosophy

Advisor/Committee Chair

Jon Mandle

Committee Member

Marcus Adams

Abstract

This paper aims to answer the question of whether international law has legitimacy and value despite the absence of global centralized coercive enforcement and whether the concept of legitimacy developed in domestic law theory can be applied to international law. By avoiding the two extremes that claim that international law is nothing more than a non-binding agreement, or that it requires the centralized enforcement of a world government, I will defend a middle position that explains the moral binding force of international law when it satisfies conditions of legitimacy. Drawing on Kant's Universal Principle of Right and Ripstein's three defects of the state of nature, I first establish why law is necessary, and then apply Rawls's liberal principle of legitimacy and public reason to identify what makes law legitimate rather than coercive. Through Kleingeld's distinction between the interpersonal and interstate states of nature, I argue that the absence of centralized enforcement is not a defect of international law but a structural feature, and that international law can achieve legitimate moral binding force through co-authorship, a minimum human rights threshold, and reciprocity among states.

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