Print Archive
International law is a mechanism of cooperation between states: it can make states vulnerable to betrayal, but also increase their chances for successful collaboration. In other words, complying with international law is like playing cooperate in a stag hunt game. Cooperating is an efficient strategy but not a strategy that is evolutionarily stable. If an autocracy emerges and starts to violate international law, democracies will violate international law in response.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The persistent objector doctrine (POD) in international law provides that a rule of customary international law (CIL) will not oblige a state that has persistently objected to the development of the rule. The doctrine requires that the objection be “persistent” and “consistent” and that it not be contradictory. This Article offers a novel understanding of “contradiction.”
This Article fills a gap in existing scholarship by offering a comprehensive explanatory and functional theory of the role of the past as a constraint in domestic and global politics, or, in short, a theory of political stare decisis.
This Comment argues that a claim brought on behalf of Australia's "Stolen Generations" at the International Court of Justice could correct the Court’s jurisprudential errors in its application of the Genocide Convention and enable the Stolen Generations to achieve justice.
This Article offers a unique typological framework to study the evolution of International Commercial Courts (ICCs). It argues that the most apt characterization of the relevant power dynamics is “co-opetition,” a combination of “cooperation/collaboration/complementarity” and “competition.”
Drawing on the moral philosophy of torture, this Article argues that siege starvation is a war crime of societal torture. Recognizing this redefines the meaning and place of the crime in the framework of international criminal law.
Using U.N. Human Rights Council Resolution 26/9 and its proposed legally binding instrument as a new avenue for transnational corporate accountability, this Comment examines FIFA’s liability for human rights violations in Qatar connected to the World Cup.
This Comment examines whether international law guarantees for linguistic minorities with disabilities the right to native language instruction.