A lunch talk with Prof. Mark Jia (Georgetown Law) on his latest scholarship on “law power.”

International relations scholars have long debated the military, economic, and cultural dimensions of national power.  Yet in new age of great power competition, we lack a general theory of national legal power comparable to these more familiar forms of national power.  Drawing on legal scholarship across many specific settings, this talk introduces a general concept of law power—a nation-state’s ability to use law to affect others to get what it wants.  Law power can be soft, hard, or sharp, and can involve local, foreign, or international law. In today’s juridified geopolitics, law power is a leading form of national power.