Of what do international relations consist? In what ways does it affect the behaviour of states?

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[...] Michael Akehurst point out that “states create international law for themselves and need not accept a new rule unless they agree to it; they need not appear before an international tribunal unless they agree to do so; and there is no centralized executive body with the task of enforcing the law.” (Akehurst, 14) International law is not the real system of legislature, no is it a genuine global legal procedure. If the international law, which is the authentic rule, really existed in global society, there would be a centralized body in enforcing and implementing international law, not only the International Court of Justice. [...]

[...] “International law upholds, with some reservations, rights created by international treaties and agreements.” (Carr, 181) Treaties are explicitly written agreements among states, and there are more than 25,000 of them written in the past 300 years on a variety of topics. Authoritative bodies, such as the UN International Law Commission, make new laws but additionally codify existing customary law. Two examples of this are the Vienna Conventions and the Law of the Sea. “Such treaties create legal obligations, the observance of which does not dissolve the treaty obligation.”(Brownlie, 12) Courts are the final component of international law. [...]

[...] “There is an ambiguous and confusing relation in international law today between the rights of citizenship, on the one hand, and universal human rights, on the other.”(Jackson & Sorenson, 171) New issues such as these create new concerns for international law and create an increasingly complex international relations arena. “Changes in the agenda of international issues and the means employed for dealing with them, together with the increased visibility of non-state actors and international institutions, pose challenges (for the future)” (Kingsbury, 371) Bibliography Akehurst, M. [...]

[...] “Power is fragmented and dispersed this state of affairs has not been consolidated into a permanent power structure. As consequence, organizational rules- ‘secondary rules', in H. Hart's terminology- are at a very embryonic stage.” (Cassese, 1986: 13) International law is an incomplete and theoretical system, it seems, which I will attempt to deal with in a moment. First, when we acknowledge international law, to what are we referring? Of what does international law consist? International law is composed of a variety of sources. These include customs, treaties, authoritative structures and courts. [...]