TY - JOUR
AU - Alvarez, José E.
AB - José E. Alvarez1 At the initiative of Professor Lauri Mälksoo, the distinguished authors of the papers published in this issue were asked to revisit an academic debate that occurred most prominently on the pages of the European Journal of Interna- tional Law back in 2001.2 When we gathered in June 2014, in a country that has only recently emerged as a professed liberal state after two occupations by distinctly illiberal nations, Nazi Germany and the USSR, we were asked to consider whether liberal states behave any better now than they did when the question was first debated and, more generally, whether it is useful today to distinguish between liberal and illiberal states. Neither in 2001 nor in Tallinn was anyone revisiting well-worn debates (particularly among political scien- tists) as to which theoretical account – from liberal theory to realism – best explains how states behave. None of us here is debating whether it is useful to go beyond the “billiard ball” model of unitary states to consider how state preferences are formed. The Tallinn conference and the articles in this year- book focus on a more limited question of particular interest to international lawyers (but with acute political ramifications 
TI - Foreword: Fifty Shades of Gray
JO - Baltic Yearbook of International Law Online
DO - 10.1163/22115897-90000055b
DA - 2016-07-29
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/brill/foreword-fifty-shades-of-gray-H6spRuZxso
SP - 1
EP - 30
VL - 15
IS - 1
DP - DeepDyve
ER -