Andrei MarmorNonbinding Agreements • July 27th, 2020
One of the most fascinating developments in the domain of international law in the last few decades is the astonishing proliferation of nonbinding legal instruments, gen- erally referred to as soft law. The forms and origins of various nonbinding legal instru- ments are quite varied, but what they have in common is the endorsement of norms, commitments, or directives, explicitly avoiding the imposition of legal obligations on the relevant parties. Needless to say, actual compliance with soft law varies considerably, but it is not negligible and sometimes surprisingly effective. International lawyers debate the legal status of soft law: Some doubt that it is genuinely legal material, others do not, and some suggest a middle ground between these two views. My concern in this essay, how- ever, is quite different. I will not discuss the legal status of soft law. Instead, I want to focus on the rationale of nonbinding legal instruments from the vantage point of practical reason.
