I must disagree. The Geneva Convention could be considered equally toothless. yet over the years it has dramatically improved the living conditions of prisoners of war. The slavery and refugee conventions are precisely thatconventions. enacted without apparent means of enforcementbut they havc helped to lay down the formal foundations of an international code of humaz rights. Such a code represents a working consensus of mankind. asserting a basic agreement on principles that imbue those principles with the special moral authority of international law. It is to such principles and to such conventions that domestic critics within any country can rally and appeal as a source of legitimacy before their own people and before the world community.