Establishing Norms in a Kaleidoscopic World

Edith Brown Weiss is University Professor at Georgetown University and past President of the American Society of International Law. She was awarded the Hudson Medal (ASIL), Elizabeth Haub Medal (IUCN/Free University of Brussels), and Doctorate Honoris Causa Heidelberg University. Her book In Fairness to Future Generations received the ASIL Certificate of Merit. From 2003-2007 she chaired the World Bank Inspection Panel.

We live in a kaleidoscopic world in the new Anthropocene Epoch. This calls for a more inclusive public international law that accepts diverse actors in addition to States and other sources of law, including individualized voluntary commitments. Norms are critical to the stability and legitimacy of this international system. They underlie responses to rapid change, to new technological developments and to problems of protecting commons, promoting public goods, and providing social and economic justice. Certain fundamental norms can be identified; others are emerging. The norm of mutual accountability underpins the implementation of other norms. Norms are especially relevant to frontier doit-yourself technologies, such as synthetic biology, digital currencies, cyber activity, and climate interventions, as addressed in the book. Reconceiving public international law lessens the sharp divide between public and private law and between domestic and international law.