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Alexander Orakhelashvili has generously responded to my "The Peremptory Norms of the International Community" with an understanding which requires a clarification on my part. On the one hand, consistently with my argument, he urges the departure from the ""cut and paste" repetition" of the sources of law. Such sources offer an "ordinary, or mainline, justification" which is "insufficient or irrelevant" to justify peremptory norms. On the other hand, he insists that "none of this is meant to challenge positivist foundations of international law". Although he emphasizes public policy as an important factor in that foundation, he also highlights fundamental values and the will, choices and universality of an international community. Orakhelashvili adds that the international social ethos, which I privileged, was "a correct premise for jus cogens, but not a sufficient one". What is also needed, he advises, is that the ethos be given "a legal expression" or language. When the nature of such a legal language is ad ressed, one is advised that the language remains a "consensual positivism". Public policy is emphasized as such an expression commonly accepted in domestic and international legal discourses, we are advised.
