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I. INTRODUCTION
The greatest contribution of Professor Louis B. Sohn to the field of international law is his unrelenting effort to confirm that it is a real and enforceable body of sound legal principles. He has promoted this idea throughout his life by working to construct effective international organizations and reliable permanent disputeresolution mechanisms so that the rights protected by international law become predictable and binding, those who violate international norms are punished, and those who are injured receive compensation. Professor Sohn always recoiled from the view that international law is merely a relativistic balancing of policy preferences, malleable to suit nations' short-term needs. He always viewed international law as a legal system like any other body of law - a set of binding rules designed to guide conduct and resolve controversies.
Professor Sohn knows all the nuances of all the decisions of the International Court of Justice and other international tribunals1 and he quotes the principles and holdings found in these opinions as authoritative sources, applicable and binding upon other nations in comparable contexts. He has aided our understanding of the importance of the negotiating process at multilateral diplomatic conferences in accelerating agreement on customary international law norms. He has also stressed the significance of the texts developed at these conferences-even those not widely ratified-in providing authoritative evidence of the existence of binding customary principles, each "add[ing] a brick to the edifice of international law."2 Although he has occasionally been characterized as a "dreamer," many of Professor Sohn' s dreams have come true, and "there is no doubt ... that the law is steadily moving in the directions he has outlined."3 Because he has always been frustrated that international law does not have sufficiently sophisticated tribunals to protect the injured and punish the wrongdoers, Professor Sohn's life's mission has been to promote the creation of new and better dispute-resolution mechanisms that aggrieved parties can utilize to protect their rights and seek compensation for their losses.4
Throughout his career, Professor Sohn has inspired his students and informed national and international decisionmakers with his systematic descriptions of existing and possible decision-making procedures. During the 1970s at Harvard Law School, for instance, he asked his student research assistant to check the 5,000 treaties registered with the League...