Most people think that the Rome treaty for the International Criminal Court would not have been concluded when it was without Internet-facilitated communication. It is reasonable to suppose that mobilization of world opinion in favor of international intervention in Kosovo would not have been possible without the Internet although television also obviously was important. In other words the Internet makes traditional sovereign states more permeable, weakening many of their traditional powers, at the same time that it empowers NGOs in all three of their functions. My final subject is the relationship between politics and law. Law is a way of crystallizing political decisions.
Legal institutions are mechanisms for carrying out political decisions.
The power of legal institutions depends upon their credibility and legitimacy in the political arena. If political officials who control enforcement resources have no respect for the decisions of formal judicial bodies, the judicial decision bodies will be powerless. That is one of the great truths that lie at the core of the effectiveness of the American judiciary. John Marshall, Chief Justice of the United States at the beginning of our First Century understood that judicial restraint was an important source of judicial power. In American law, judicial restraint is embodied among other things in the political question doctrine, which says that some matters are not fit for formal judicial decision making and must be reserved to the more fluid political institutions such as the United States Congress or state legislatures.