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Tom Ginsburg’s excellent book Democracies and International Law provides a careful, multifaceted account of how democratic nation states and international instruments and institutions interact. This brief response Essay takes up just one thread in the book’s comprehensive tapestry. A pressing worry in contemporary democracies is the effect of social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube on the quality of democratic debate. Many complain that platform-mediated misinformation and hate speech damage the democratic practice of public debate. They are also said to undermine dispositions of truthfulness and mutual trust. All these necessary predicates to democratic stability are said to be at risk due to misinformation of both domestic and foreign origin. I consider here whether international law or institutions provide resources for mitigating (or perhaps exacerbating) these harms.

In his new book, Democracies and International Law, Professor Tom Ginsburg asks, “What is the relationship between democracy and international law?” His book demonstrates—through an incredibly careful and rich empirical analysis—whether, how, and why democracies behave differently than non-democracies in their use of international legal institutions.

Illiberal regimes in Central and Eastern Europe deploy various methods to legitimize their actions and entrench their rule. In Poland, where the government has managed to capture the highest courts and partially pack them with politicized judges willing to support unconstitutional reforms of the justice system, these insidious practices have recently become even more refined.

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.