What Realists Don’t Understand About Law

BY OONA HATHAWAY, SCOTT J. SHAPIRO

In our recent book The Internationalists, we point to a change in the legal status of war as the core cause of the shift. Realists have reacted with incredulity. Stephen M. Walt, for example, argued in Foreign Policy that if we are right, “I’ve been guilty of educational malpractice for the past 30 years.” He concludes that, thankfully, he can leave his lecture notes intact because we have failed to prove our case.