The large approach to general principles may even have brought about harm. It has encouraged people to argue from quite general
principles, divorced from the rules that give them meaning: rules that qualify, that temper and restrict, and so on. Think, for example, of the use that has been made of pacta sunt servanda by some American corporation lawyers; in propagating simplistic views of the unqualified binding character of contract, that are otherwise not to be met with, outside relatively primitive societies, and presenting them as part of international law.