The New Haven School of International Law offered a significant,
process-based rejoinder to the realism and positivism that had dominated
international relations theory in the United States since the close of World
War II. Whereas international relations realists viewed international law as
merely a product of state power relations,
and positivists dismissed
international law entirely because it lacked both sovereign commands and a
rule of recognition,2 scholars of the New Haven School studied law as a social
process of authoritative decisionmaking.3 Such a study necessarily expanded
the state-focused perspective of both the realists and positivists by drawing
attention to ongoing interactions among variously situated bureaucratic and
institutional actors.