When International Law Works ─ Realistic Idealism After 9/11 and the Global Recession

In When International Law Works, Professor Tai-Heng Cheng transcends current debates about whether international law is really law by focusing on the reasons for complying with or deviating from international laws and other informal norms, whether or not they are 'law.' Cheng presents a new framework to guide decision makers when they confront an international problem that implicates the oftencompeting policies and interests of their own communities and global order. Instead of advocating for or against international law, Cheng acknowledges both its benefits and shortcomings in order to present practical ways to decide whether compliance in a given circumstance is beneficial, moral, or necessary, and to adjust international law to meet the contemporary challenges of global governance. In this manner, Cheng shows how it is possible for decision makers to take international law and its
limitations seriously.

To test his theory, Cheng provides detailed case studies from recent events, ranging from the current global economic crisis to jihadist terrorism. This wideranging research demonstrates how his proposal for approaching international law would work in a real crisis, and sets this book apart from scholarship that focuses
only on theory or isolated fields of international law.

Through a critical combination of theory and practice, When International Law Works gives policymakers, judges, arbitrators, scholars, and students practical and thought-provoking guidance on how to face new global problems. In doing so, this new book challenges readers to rethink the role of law in an increasingly crisis-driven world.

Tai-Heng Cheng is Professor of Law and Co-Director of the Institute for Global Law, Justice, & Policy at
New York Law School, and has been a visiting professor at Vanderbilt Law School.

An author of over forty books, articles and essays, Professor Cheng's research has been published in the University of Illinois Law Review, Temple Law Review, and the Michigan Journal of International Law. His scholarship has been cited and relied on as authoritative by U.S. federal circuit and district courts.

Professor Cheng is a member of the Executive Council of American Society of International Law, chairs its Awards Committee, and was co-chair of its 2011 Annual Meeting. He is also a member of the Executive Committee and Academic Council of the Institute for Transnational Arbitration, and a member of the American Law Institute.

Professor Cheng has served as tribunal chair, arbitrator, lead counsel and expert in ICSCID, UNCITRAL, ICDR, ICC, SCC, and JAMS arbitrations, and in U.S. and Canada court proceedings. He is a member of the panels of neutrals of the ICDR, CPR, and HKIAC. He has also advised the U.N. Transitional Administration in East Timor and the Republic of Kosovo on international and comparative law.

Professor Cheng holds Doctor of the Science of Law and Master of Laws degrees from Yale Law School, where he was Howard M. Holtzmann Fellow for International Law. He also holds a law degree with First Class Honors from Oxford University.