If there is a “new” New Haven School, then its roots spring in part from
Harold Koh’s melding of the original New Haven School with the legal
pluralism of Robert Cover. Unfortunately, those who study international
public and private law have not, historically, paid much attention to Robert
Cover’s work or to the scholars of legal pluralism more generally.45 This is
because the emphasis traditionally has been on state-to-state relations. Indeed,
international law has generally emphasized bilateral and multilateral treaties
between and among states, the activities of the United Nations, the
pronouncements of international tribunals, and (somewhat more
controversially) the norms that states have obeyed for long enough that such
norms could be deemed customary.46 This was a legal universe with two
guiding principles. First, law was deemed to reside only in the acts of official,
state-sanctioned entities. Second, law was seen as an exclusive function of
state sovereignty.