... 1996) or a legal one as proposed by the international legal process approach (Boyle 1985, Chayes 1974); 2) realists misperceive international law's functions as merely constraint on state's behavior instead of a wider range of functions such as communication, justification, reassurance, monitoring and routinization.(Chayes & Chays 1995, Franck 1990); 3) realists misperceive international law's influence as having no significance on politics at its own right instead of closely relating and affecting politics. The paper is divided into three parts. In the first part, it discusses how realism understands international law and why it perceives international law as having no intrinsic importance on international politics. The second part discusses why realists are wrong with their perception on the nature, function and influence of international law. Besides, some political response to the realist challenge, such as institutionalism and liberalism, are also discussed. So are some possible critiques of our arguments. In the ...

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