It is perhaps commonplace to observe that recent developments in information technology are revolutionizing most aspects of our lives. Anything that affects our lives so profoundly will, of necessity, have a significant effect on the law. We can expect that the information revolution will have a comparably significant impact on the international system of binding obligations often called public international law. Just what that will be is of course extremely difficult to predict. Compounding that difficulty is the lack of consensus on just what actually amounts to the public international legal system. Scholars and lawyers still debate fundamental questions regarding the sources of public international law, the ways in which public international law binds, and indeed whether it in fact binds.

The theme of the annual meeting of the Section on International Law of the Association of American Law Schools, held in the first week of the new millennium, was the effect of the Internet on public international law. In this introduction, the author describes briefly the articles, essays, and notes in this Symposium. The author then attempts some preliminary observations about what their insights suggest about the nature of public international law.