In this book, Professor Michael Scharf of the Case Western Reserve Law School and Professor Paul R. Williams of the Washington College of Law at American University have shed light on a place of former darkness and in the process have destroyed three abiding myths about the nature and uses of international law.

The place of former darkness now exposed to light is the little known Office of Legal Adviser in the U.S. State Department. Few outside of the diplomatic corps know of this agency, described by some as the finest law firm in the United States because of the consistently high quality of lawyers who labor in its offices and who now number close to 200.

Professors Scharf and Williams have approached the opening of this “black box” in an unusual way – they assembled ten former Legal Advisers, beginning with the Legal Adviser from the Carter Administration, interviewed them, and then allowed each to write a short essay about his experiences within the context of five questions that were posed to them.

The five questions were:

1. Whether the Legal Advisers perceived international law to be binding law, such that it should be able to constrain the options available to the U.S. government when dealing with a crisis central to its national security?
   
   
   
2. Whether the international legal rules relevant to a particular situation were clear enough to significantly shape the policy options available to the U.S. government?
   
   
3. Whether the Legal Adviser believed he had a duty to oppose policies or proposed actions that conflicted with international law in those situations in which such a conflict was objectively manifest?
   
   
   
4. Whether the position taken by the Legal Adviser was seen as influential in cases in which he advised against a course of action on the grounds that it violated international law?
   
   
   
5. Whether the Legal Advisers perceived international law as hindering or promoting their government’s interests in times of crisis?

What came out of this unique approach are fascinating, and in many instances previously unknown, actions and activities of the OLA that: (1) assisted senior government officials and government agencies in the formulation of U.S. foreign policy; (2) provided realistic assessments of, and sometimes counsel of restraint for, proposed courses of action; (3) offered creative ways of using international law to solve foreign policy problems; and (4) cleaned up “messes” that resulted from either the OLA not being consulted prior to the government proceeding with a course of action or from OLA advice being ignored.

Harold Koh, the current Legal Adviser and former Dean of the Yale Law School, provides the introduction to the book. He observes that it destroys three myths about international law:

1. International law is not really law;
   
   
2. Foreign policy should be left exclusively to the President;
   
   
3. The United States cannot take part in the international system without surrendering its sovereignty.

The authors, before introducing the essays of the ten former Legal Advisors, discuss the “compliance” debate, that is, whether and to what extent nations actually comply with international law, which involves an analysis of the different approaches to international law by different scholars.  This initial chapter is followed by a short chapter devoted to a description of how each Legal Adviser came to his position (no female has as yet occupied the position, although the OLA staff is now almost 50% women).

The next ten chapters provide the real substance of the book, as each Legal Adviser provides an account of his term in office, focusing primarily on the crises that he faced.  Of particular interest is one of the final chapters in the book, in which former legal advisers from the U.K., Russia, China, India and Ethiopia discuss their respective roles in their countries.  Coming as a surprise to many will be the fact that all of these “foreign” legal advisers affirmed the existence of international law in their countries and the guidance that international law has provided to their governments in the formulation of foreign policy.

The authors’ conclusions from the discussions and essays are:

1. The Legal Advisers unanimously perceived international law as real law, binding on their governments and collectively creating a legal regime that operated as a constraint on policymakers;
   
   
2. International legal rules are often quite vague but the “international legal framework” provides boundaries inside of which policy decisions are taken;
   
   
3. The Legal Adviser has a special or higher professional responsibility to provide a disinterested assessment of a proposed policy or course of action;
   
   
4. Policy makers “accord substantial weight” to the Legal Adviser’s legal opinions;
   
   
5. All of the Legal Advisers “embraced” international law as a tool for advising about their governments' foreign policy goals.

I would like to add one other conclusion that is discernible from the book: Government agencies and government officers who do not consult with the OLA before embarking on a course of action, or who ignore OLA advice, do so at their peril.

This is a pioneering book written and published at a critical time in the history of international law.  Hopefully it will influence the direction that the role of international law will take in the coming years, that is, whether international law will blossom into a full flower and be recognized as a real hope for humanity in its quest for peace and security, or whether it will be consigned to the backwaters of relations between nations, rarely consulted and rarely followed.  For that reason, this book is to be recommended equally to government officials, to judges, to students of international law, and to the general public for the light that it throws on a little known and vitally important agency within the United States Department of State.