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Introduction: Understanding CITES as law with limitations
In the scholarship of international law there are a number of memorable defenses, made over the last several decades, of the value and importance of the 1973 Conven- tion on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES)1 for helping to prevent wildlife extinctions.2
Most memorable, perhaps, are the classic case for the ultimate perfectibility of CITES as an instrument of international law made in the context of elephant con- servation by Michael Glennon in 1990;3 the frequently cited brief for the possi- bly endless adaptability and evolutionary ingenuity of the Convention made by Peter Sand in 1997;4 and the vigorous, full-throated assertion of both the desirabil- ity and inevitability of continuance of the treaty pretty much in its present form made by John Scanlon, the Secretary-General of CITES, in a special journal issue devoted to an appraisal and assessment of the evolving treaty5 that appeared not long after the 16th Conference of the Parties (CoP) to CITES, held in Bangkok in March of 2013.6
Scanlon argued in 2013 that CITES CoP 16 manifested an unusually high degree of both comity among the parties and determination to stay the course in imple- menting the convention, knowing full well that the next and upcoming CoP 17 would be held in Johannesburg, South Africa, in the Fall of 2016, and that there the ability of the treaty to protect African elephants from extinction would be a par- ticularly divisive issue, perhaps so divisive that it would tear apart the thin veneer of international agreement that has kept CITES alive for more than forty years.7