Fordham Law School FLASH: The Fordham Law Archive of Scholarship and History Faculty Scholarship 2004 International Law, International Relations Theory, and Preemptive War: The Vitality of Sovereign Equallity Today Case Studies in Conservative and Progressive Legal Orders Thomas H. Lee Fordham University School of Law,
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/faculty_scholarship Part of the International Law Commons Recommended Citation Thomas H. Lee, International Law, International Relations Theory, and Preemptive War: The Vitality of Sovereign Equallity Today Case Studies in Conservative and Progressive Legal Orders, 67 Law & Contemp. Probs. 147 (2004) Available at: https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/faculty_scholarship/406 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by FLASH: The Fordham Law Archive of Scholarship and History. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faculty Scholarship by an authorized administrator of FLASH: The Fordham Law Archive of Scholarship and History. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. INTERNATIONAL LAW, INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS THEORY, AND PREEMPTIVE WAR: THE VITALITY OF SOVEREIGN EQUALITY TODAY THOMAS H. LEE* I INTRODUCTION The norm of sovereign equality in international law is so resolutely canonical' that its precise meaning, origins, and justifications are rarely examined. 2 Whatever the general merits of the norm, its retention seems fairly open to question when one sov- ereign state appears supremely unequal among 191 sovereign states' in terms of mili- Copyright © 2004 by Thomas H. Lee This Article is also available at http://www.law.duke.edu/journals/lcp. *Associate Professor, Fordham University School of Law. A.B., A.M., J.D., Ph.D.