Comment by DemocracyFTW2
1 day ago
That police and justice courts don't catch every thief is not an argument to abolish the judiciary or make stealing legal. That police and judges habitually act in favor of certain people is likewise not an indication that a society without regulatory institutions is better off than one with admittedly flawed ones.
Police and courts have legitimacy because they are created by the sovereign nation. There is no sovereign entity above the nation - you're comparing apples and hammers.
If nations have legitimacy then they can enter into supra-/international bodies and agreements with legitimacy much like two persons can agree on an arbiter to resolve differences in their mutual contracts. This is nothing new and we've been doing it for a long time—the Egyptian 18th dynasty entered into the first known peace treaty with a foreign nation 1500 years BCE; NATO and the United Nations are modern examples. The US, of course, is a country that has been notoriously difficult to get into international agreements (Paris/Kyoto, WHO, ICC).
Those international bodies and agreements only have legitimacy because nations agree that they do.
To take a slightly different take, Mexico exists as an objective fact. The EU can decide not to recognize Mexico as a country but Mexico continues to exist and faces basically no adverse reaction from this. If the countries that make up the EU decided it was done and stopped acknowledging it, it would cease to exist. It has no population, no military, no land. No means of projecting force. Mexico retains these properties and abilities regardless of any agreements to the contrary, or lack thereof.
I'm not saying international agreements don't exist but that they have no inherent sovereignty because they are by definition but hand-shake agreements between independent sovereign members.