23.1
Summer
2022

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Essay
23.1
Dark Law on the South China Sea
Stephen Cody
Assistant Professor of Law, Suffolk University Law School; PhD, J.D., University of California, Berkeley; MPhil, Cambridge University; B.A., Temple University.

The author is grateful to the Chicago Journal of International Law editors and symposium participants Karen Alter, Aslı Ü. Bâli, Shai Dothan, Aleksandra Dzięgielewska, Veronika Fikfak, Tom Ginsburg, Aziz Huq, Tokujin Matsudaira, Eric Posner, Mariana Olaizola Rosenblat, Brad Roth, and Tim Webster. I also appreciate feedback from Amanda Beck and Joshua Weishart.

Autocrats and kleptocrats embedded in the global economy increasingly appear to use international law to preserve their power, protect norms of non-intervention, and enhance the global stability of autocratic rule. Legalistic autocrats, for example, exploit judicial deference and vague statutory language in national security laws to circumvent checks on their authority. This process, which I call “dark law,” aids in the consolidation of state power and the global entrenchment of authoritarianism. In this Essay, I argue that dark law also contributes to the construction of authoritarian international law.

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23.1
The Limits of Prodemocratic International Law in Europe
Aslı Ü. Bâli
Professor of Law, UCLA School of Law.

I would like to thank the symposium participants for their helpful comments and the editors of the journal for their excellent suggestions. I would also like to thank Mariam Abuladze for exceptional research assistance.

In this symposium contribution, I examine the impact of the relationship between the European Union (E.U.) and Turkey on that country’s record of democratic backsliding. I argue that European countries’ difficulties in managing multi-racial democracy have limited the depth and effectiveness of the E.U.’s pro-democratic commitments in its dealings with Turkey.

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23.1
The Future of Embedded International Law: Democratic and Authoritarian Trajectories
Karen J. Alter
Norman Dwight Harris Professor of International Relations, Northwestern University and Permanent Visiting Professor at iCourts, the Danish National Research Council’s Center of Excellence for international courts.

This short Essay explains why deeply embedding international law (IL) directly into domestic legal orders is seen as a helpful democratic legal strategy to make international law more effective. It also describes the logistics of embedding international law into national legal systems.

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Essay
23.1
Democracies and International Law: An Update
Tom Ginsburg
Leo Spitz Distinguished Service Professor of International Law, Ludwig and Hilde Wolf Research Scholar, Professor of Political Science

Thanks to Miriam Kohn and Thomas Weil for research assistance, and to Aleksandra Dzięgielewska for helpful comments.

This short Essay provides an update of my recently published book, Democracies and International Law, which brings together several of my academic concerns over the past two decades.

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