This week on Opinio Juris, we hosted a symposium on International Law as Behavior, following a workshop at the University of Georgia in late 2014. Elena Baylis discussed the methodological, theoretical and conceptual questions that need to be grappled with when studying international law as behavior, while Galit Sarfaty provided insights from anthropology for the study of international law behavior. More specific issues were dealt with in posts by Jean Galbraith, who reflected on the use of deadlines in international law, Tim Meyer, who described instances of epistemic cooperation as a way of encouraging states to coordinate their behavior, and Harlan Cohen, who addressed the puzzling phenomenon of precedent in international law. Tomer Broude applied behavioural theory to the ongoing negotiations on the Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA), and Harlan Cohen closed the symposium with reflections on the agenda for the study of international law as behavior.

The Palestinian ratification of the Rome Statute and its article 12(3) declaration was the subject of extensive commentary. Kevin disagreed with Nimrod Karin’s posts on Just Security that these steps amount to “lawfare”. He also argued why an investigation into Arafat’s death would be problematic. The issues of settlements in the West Bank was discussed in Ido Rosenzweig’s guest post and by Kevin who explained why the Palestinian Authority cannot use an ICC investigation as leverage to freeze settlement construction.

Foreign affairs law issues came up in Peter’s discussion of the constitutionality of Boehner’s invite to Netanyahu in light of precedents where the Logan Act was invoked, Julian’s argument that President Obama needs congressional approval to lift the trade embargo on Cuba, and Julian’s analysis whether a US-Iranian nuclear deal should take the form of an article II treaty with its requirement of congressional approval.

In other posts,  Fox News came under fire from Kevin for its report on Paris’ “no-go” zones and from Deborah over its factual inaccuracies in reports on Muslims in the UK and France. Kristen updated us on the Haiti Cholera case where the SDNY upheld the UN’s immunity, and Kevin posted a youtube video of a protest song on Australia’s detention centre on Manus Island

Finally, Jessica wrapped up the international news headlines and I rounded up the events and announcements.

Many thanks to our guest contributors and have a nice weekend!

Just Security has published two long guest posts (here and here) on the ICC and Palestine by Nimrod Karin, a J.S.D. candidate at New York University School of Law who was previously Deputy Legal Adviser to Israel’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations. There is much to respect about the posts, which are careful, substantive, and avoid needless hyperbole. And I agree with Karin on a surprising number of issues, particularly concerning the institutional reasons why (for better or worse) the ICC is likely to avoid opening a formal investigation into the situation in Palestine.

I disagree, though, with Karin’s insistence that Palestine has engaged in “lawfare” by ratifying the Rome Statute and using Art. 12(3) to accept the Court’s jurisdiction retroactive to 13 June 2014 — the day after the kidnapping and murder of the three young Israelis. Here is what he says in his second post (emphasis in original):

To readers who are utterly unsurprised by the dating of the ad hoc declaration I would simply add – likewise. It’s an example illustrating the strategic nature of the Palestinian multilateral maneuvering, which is squarely within their prerogative, acting as any other self-interested political entity would. But then maybe we should dial down the discourse depicting this as an idealistically motivated move – striking a blow for international criminal justice, or placing a conflict under the umbrella of law – and come to terms with the fact that the Palestinians are practicing lawfare by any other name, even at the expense of the values supposedly guiding their march to the ICC.

I wince whenever I see the term “lawfare,” because it is normally just short-hand for “I disagree with X’s legal actions.” Even if the concept has meaning, though, I don’t see how it can be used to describe what Palestine has done. To begin with, as Karin acknowledges, Palestine did not pluck the June 13 date out of thin air — it’s the same date that the Human Rights Committee selected for the beginning of the Schabas Commission’s mandate. Perhaps that was a political decision by the HRC, but Palestine can hardly be faulted for following its lead, especially given that it could have gone much further back in time (its first Art. 12(3) declaration purported to accept jurisdiction from 1 July 2002) — something for which Karin curiously gives Palestine no credit whatsoever.

I also don’t understand what is so troubling about the June 13 date. To be sure, the kidnap and murder of the three young Israelis was a horrific act. But it’s anything but clear whether Hamas leadership was responsible for their kidnapping and murder. It’s not even clear whether they were killed late on June 12 or early June 13 — the latter date within Palestine’s grant of jurisdiction. So how can Palestine’s choice of June 13 be some kind of devious move to maximise Israel’s criminal exposure while minimising its own?

More fundamentally, though, I simply reject the basic premise of Karin’s argument: namely, that taking a dispute to an international criminal tribunal with general jurisdiction can be seen as lawfare. Perhaps it’s possible to view tribunals with a one-sided mandate (de jure or de facto) as lawfare — the IMT prosecuting only Nazis, the ICTR prosecuting only Hutus. But the ICC? The ICC investigates situations, not specific crimes. By ratifying the Rome Statute and filing its Art. 12(3) declaration, Palestine has taken both Israel and itself to the ICC, not Israel alone. Palestine thus no longer has any control whatsoever over which individuals and which crimes the OTP investigates. That’s not lawfare, that’s bravery — especially given that, as I’ve pointed out time and again on the blog, the OTP is quite likely to go after Hamas crimes before it goes after Israeli crimes. In fact, the only lawfare being practiced in the context of Operation Protective Edge would seem to be by Israel, which has responded to the OTP’s preliminary investigation — which it opened as a matter of situation-neutral policy, not because of some kind of animus toward Israel — by condemning the ICC as a “political body” and launching a campaign to convince member states to stop funding it (which would be a clear violation of their treaty obligations under the Rome Statute).

I have little doubt that Palestine would be delighted if the ICC prosecuted only Israelis for international crimes. But it has to know how unlikely that is. Instead of condemning its decision to ratify the Rome Statute and submit an Art. 12(3) declaration as “lawfare,” therefore, we should be celebrating its commitment to international criminal justice. Indeed, if a state can practice lawfare by giving an international criminal tribunal the jurisdiction to investigate its own crimes as well as the crimes committed by its enemy, the concept has no meaning at all.

The fight between President Obama and Congress over Cuba policy is nothing compared the brewing struggle over a U.S.-Iran agreement over Iran’s nuclear program. I noticed this little foreign affairs law nugget today from the WSJ’s report of this ongoing struggle (emphasis added):

In the Senate, Mr. Menendez, of New Jersey, is co-author of a bill that seeks to impose new, escalating sanctions on Tehran if negotiators fail to conclude an agreement limiting Iran’s nuclear program before the end of June, the diplomatic deadline.

A second piece of legislation, promoted by the committee’s new chairman, Sen. Bob Corker (R., Tenn.), seeks to give Congress the power to either approve or reject any nuclear agreement reached with Tehran.

Senior administration officials who testified before the committee said the White House would oppose both bills.

Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the White House doesn’t view an agreement with Iran as a treaty that requires Senate approval, but a matter of “executive prerogative.”

In general, I think the President has broad discretion under U.S. statutes to impose or lift sanctions on Iran, and although I haven’t looked at the Iran sanctions in detail, I bet the President has broad powers to waive sanctions without going back to Congress. The White House is certainly acting like that’s the case, although the devil is in the details.

Not surprisingly given where I perch on the political spectrum, I love protest songs. One of my favourite jogging playlists is a disparate collection of classics — Buffalo Springfield’s “For What It’s Worth,” Barry McGuire’s “Eve of Destruction,” Country Joe and the Fish’s “I Feel Like I’m Fixin to Die Rag,” Paul Revere and the Raiders’ “Indian Reservation,” Phil Och’s “I Ain’t Marching Anymore” (the greatest anti-war song ever), and a bunch of others.

I’ve now added a new song to my playlist: Peter Joseph Head’s “I Cannot Recall (Ballad of Manus Island),” a very unusual jazz/spoken-word hybrid about Australia’s horrific detention centre in Papua New Guinea. Manus Island has been much in the news lately, because the refugees detained there have gone on a hunger strike — and tried to kill themselves by swallowing razor blades and laundry detergent — to protest their confinement and living conditions. Here is the YouTube video; the spoken words seem to be based on the transcript of a lawsuit involving the detention centre:

You can read about the Melbourne-based Head here, and you can find a higher-quality recording of the song here. I’ve embedded the YouTube video so readers can see images of Manus Island.

Listen. Read. Learn.

Protest.

H/T: Bianca Dillon.

John Boehner has invited Bibi Netanyahu to address Congress. There’s a modern tradition of foreign leaders appearing before the legislature (list here). I’m willing to bet that every single one of those appearances was pre-cleared with the State Department or White House in advance.

I’m no student of Middle East politics, but it’s seems pretty clear that the the White House and the congressional GOP leadership are at loggerheads on US policy here and that the Boehner invitation is meant to advance the GOP (and Israeli) position on Iran. In the past, when members of Congress have gone freelance on foreign policy there’s been a tradition of waving around the Logan Act, which provides:

Private correspondence with foreign governments.

Any citizen of the United States, wherever he may be, who, without authority of the United States, directly or indirectly commences or carries on any correspondence or intercourse with any foreign government or any officer or agent thereof, with intent to influence the measures or conduct of any foreign government or of any officer or agent thereof, in relation to any disputes or controversies with the United States, or to defeat the measures of the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.

It happened most prominently when Jim Wright played footsie with Nicaragua’s Sandinista regime in the 1980s. It was suggested as a problem as recently as 2007 when Nancy Pelosi visited Syria against Bush Administration wishes. As conservative commentator Bob Turner argued in a Wall Street Journal op-ed (“Illegal Diplomacy“):

consider this statement by Albert Gallatin, the future Secretary of the Treasury under President Thomas Jefferson, who was wary of centralized government: “it would be extremely improper for a member of this House to enter into any correspondence with the French Republic . . . As we are not at war with France, an offence of this kind would not be high treason, yet it would be as criminal an act, as if we were at war . . . .” Indeed, the offense is greater when the usurpation of the president’s constitutional authority is done by a member of the legislature — all the more so by a Speaker of the House — because it violates not just statutory law but constitutes a usurpation of the powers of a separate branch and a breach of the oath of office Ms. Pelosi took to support the Constitution.

No intent here to compare Netanyahu and Assad, but the logic of presidential control applies in both cases. (This isn’t about actual prosecution under the Logan Act. No one is ever actually prosecuted under the measure; it’s more a focal point for highlighting structural aspects of foreign relations.) In both cases, presidential powers are “embarrassed” in the terms of Curtiss-Wright. Will the Wall Street Journal take Boehner to task for his move? Somehow I doubt it. (For that matter how could constitutional originalists square this with the Framers’ intent? No head of a foreign state appears to have addressed Congress prior to 1919.)

The White House has called the Boehner move a breach of protocol. If this were happening beyond the political anomalies of the Middle East, I wonder if it might be using some stronger language. In any case the episode will set a precedent for congressional bypass of executive branch foreign policy in interacting, fairly formally, with foreign government leaders. (Will the Speaker host something like a state dinner for Bibi?)

Mind you, I’m not sure it’s a bad precedent (again, leaving aside policy particulars of the ME situation). It’s a fact of life that governmental components are now semi-autonomous foreign policy players in a way that would have been unimaginable in the 18th century. The constitutional custom, norms, “protocols” — whatever you want to call them — are catching up to those realities. Presidents will just have to learn to deal with the new tools of foreign policy dissent.

[Adv. Ido Rosenzweig is the chairman of ALMA –Association for the Promotion of International Humanitarian Law; Director of Research – Terror, Belligerency and Cyber at the Minerva Center for the Rule of Law under Extreme Conditions in the University of Haifa; and a PhD candidate at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.]

Recently the Palestinians submitted (for the second time) a declaration accepting the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in accordance with article 12(3) of the Rome Statute, thus providing jurisdiction to the International Criminal Court over their territory starting with June 13^th, 2014. This was conducted alongside the Palestinian accession to the Rome Statute. That act was described as a political storm, a very aggressive and game changing move by the Palestinians who decided to throw their most important card into the game. That move gave rise to many different questions about its legality and the possible legal and political implications for Israel. In this short comment I address some of these issues and provide my own point of view on them.

What’s at stake here? Currently the ICC has jurisdiction over three types of crimes – war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. It could be argued that with regard to most crime allegations Israel will have the option of raising the complementarity argument in accordance with article (article 17(1)(a) of the Rome Statute). Israel will most likely base her complementarity argument on the outcomes of the 2^nd Turkel Report and the ongoing investigation process. However, even if the Israeli complementarity claim stands, there’s still one issue which complementarity won’t resolve, and that’s the settlements.

Where’s the problem? The wording of article 8(2)(b)(viii) goes:

“The transfer, directly or indirectly, by the Occupying Power of parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies, or the deportation or transfer of all or parts of the population of the occupied territory within or outside this territory;”

There’s a legitimate argument claiming that the settlements and more precisely, the government’s support of the settlements and the transfer of people from Israel to the West Bank, are strictly prohibited and amount to war crimes under the Rome Statute article (“the transfer, directly or indirectly, by the Occupying Power of parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies”). Moreover, since the Israeli High Court of Justice ruled that the Israeli policy regarding the settlements is not justiciable (for example see HCJ 4481/91 Bargil v. GoI), it seems that in this case Israel could be considered as “unwilling and unable” to exercise its jurisdiction with regard to the settlements (or some aspects of that policy).

Will the ICC investigate the Settlements? This question brings us to the other barriers of the ICC admissibility (besides complementarity). The first barrier is gravity (article 17(1)(d)) – the ICC will only deal with severe violations. The interpretations assigned to the population transfer prohibition vary in such way that some from a prohibition to forcibly deport local population into occupied territory, which probably doesn’t include the Israeli settlements in the West Bank, to other interpretations which could include the situation of the settlements.

Another barrier is the territorial jurisdiction of the Palestinians over the settlements. In their recent 12(3) declaration, the Palestinians provided jurisdiction to the court over “the Occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem“. However, it’s not legally clear over what territory the Palestinian are allowed to provide jurisdiction to the ICC. This is due to the fact that there’s no clear decision or ruling about what constitutes the territory of the Palestinians. In fact, the November 29^th, 2012 General Assembly’s resolution 67/19 clearly stated that the issues of the Palestine refugees, Jerusalem, settlements, borders, security and water need to be resolved via negotiations. This can lead to three very important conclusions – (a) It is unclear if the territory where the settlements are located is under Palestinian jurisdiction and therefore if such jurisdiction can be granted to the ICC; and (b) since the very same resolution provided the Palestinians with the upgraded status also left the resolution of borders and settlements to negotiations, it is unclear if the ICC would be allowed to resolve such sensitive political questions through criminal procedures; (c) finally, it can also be argued that by leaving the settlements issue to negotiations, the international community doesn’t regard the transfer of population as a severe act which meets the gravity threshold that was mentioned above.

What’s next? This is where things get even more complicated. Since the questions of the borders and territory are important, they need to be resolved somehow. In my view there are (at least) six potential and interesting ways for these questions to be resolved:

• Another General Assembly resolution clarifying the situation and thus changing the requirement for negotiations in order to resolve those issues. I think that if the Palestinians were able to achieve that in the first place they would have done so. Therefore it seems that there won’t be a majority in the General Assembly for such a resolution.
• Security Council resolution on this issue. This is the most farfetched option, as it was the refusal of the Security Council to adopt a relevant resolution that led to the Palestinian Accession to begin with.
• Decision of the ICC with regard to its jurisdiction. While this could be the main road in this context – letting the ICC prosecutor and after that the Judges, decide on the Court’s jurisdiction, it’s a well known fact that the ICC doesn’t operate rapidly and I believe that the Palestinians won’t be willing to sit down and wait until the ICC issues a decision on that topic.
• Advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) is probably the Palestinian’s next move. While it’s not a “win-win” situation for the Palestinians as the ICJ might decide against their claim for jurisdiction over the settlements’ territory, it is definitely a “win-no lose” situation where they can gain with a decision in their favor or remain in the same situation as they are now if the ICJ rules against their claim for jurisdiction.
• The Human Rights Committee, the professional body charged with the implementation and interpretation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights which the Palestinians joined in their first round of ratification of treaties. When the Palestinians come before the committee, one of the decisions the committee will have to make will relate to the treaty’s territorial applicability, and to that end, the committee will have to decide whether Palestinian territory includes the settlements. I doubt that the professional committee will desire to deal with such a hot political and diplomat potato, and anyway, such a review is not scheduled for the upcoming year.
• Lastly, as was suggested here by my good friend and colleague, Sigall Horovitz, Israel has also the option of joining to the Rome Statute and submitting a declaration under article 124 with an attempt to gain a delay of seven years with regard to the ICC’s jurisdiction over any allegation of war crimes committed by Israel.

It seems that the already complicated Israeli-Palestinian situation just got more complicated, and while it’s unclear what the outcome will be, I’m just not sure that outcome of the Palestinian move was as aggressive as it seemed at first glance. The question of the settlements is obviously broader than the discussion presented above, and in this short comment I presented my thoughts on one specific aspect related to them following the recent developments.

It looks like a big showdown is brewing between the President and Congress over Cuba policy (Here comes 2016 presidential candidate Rubio!).  Some legal commentators have argued, however, that President Obama already has the legal authority to lift all or most of the Cuba embargo without any further action by Congress.  Robert Muse, a lawyer whose practice is all about Cuba sanctions law, has stated that the President has very broad discretion to lift most of the restrictions on trade with Cuba without further congressional action. Is he right?

I am not Cuba sanctions law expert, so it is possible I am missing something.  Since the bulk of the Cuba sanctions are found in regulations issued by the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control pursuant to the Trading with the Enemy Act, it would seem like President Obama could indeed lift those sanctions by simply withdrawing those regulations.  The TWEA has never been read to require sanctions, and President Carter lifted similar sanctions on China without Congress in 1979.

On the other hand, Congress has also enacted two Cuba-specific statutes: the Cuban Democracy Act of 1992 (CDA), 22 U.S.C. §§ 6001-6010 and the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity (Libertad) Act of 1996, 22 U.S.C. §§ 6021-6091 (“Helms Burton). The latter appears to codify” the OFAC regulations on Cuba that were initially issued under the TWEA. See Section 102(h) (“Codification of Economic Embargo.– The economic embargo of Cuba, as in effect on March 1, 1996, including all restrictions under part 515 of title 31, Code of Federal Regulations, shall be in effect upon the enactment of this Act, and shall remain in effect, subject to section 204 of this Act.”).  Section 204 in turn “authorizes” the President to lift sanctions only after submitting a determination to Congress that a transitional government in Cuba exists and that the lifting of sanctions will contribute “to the stable foundation for democratic government.” There is also the Trade Sanctions Reform and Export Enhancement Act of 2000 (TSRA), 22 U.S.C. §§ 7201-7211, which imposes further limitations on financial transactions with Cuba and allows no Presidential waiver.

It is worth noting that President Clinton expressed some reservations about the impact of Section 102(h) when he signed the Helms-Burton Act, stating that it”could be read to impose overly rigid constraints on the implementation of our foreign policy.” But Clinton didn’t suggest imposing conditions on when the President could lift sanctions actually violated the Constitution.  Since I assume Congress is the source of the authority to impose sanctions in the first place, it seems reasonable that Congress could impose conditions on when those sanctions can be lifted.  Any argument that those conditions themselves are unconstitutional would be a remarkably aggressive legal argument.

So I don’t think the calls from some quarters for a unilateral lifting of the embargo on Cuba is supportable as a legal matter.  In fact, there are good reasons to doubt the legality of the loosening of sanctions already announced by OFAC.  In any event, there will be lots of legal skirmishing over the next few months on this front. It will be interesting to see if President Obama ever pulls out the “presidentialist” card and tries to argue some of these sanctions laws violate his constitutional authority.  I would doubt it, but then again I never thought he would engage in a separate war in Iraq and Syria with ISIS and change US immigration law without Congress either.

[Harlan Cohen is an Associate Professor of Law at the University of Georgia School of Law]

What is the study of “International Law as Behavior”?  At the workshop in November, Elena Baylis, Tomer Broude, Galit Sarfaty, Jean Galbraith, and Tim Meyer (whose chapters/presentations were described earlier) were joined by Kathryn Sikkink, who presented on the role of agency in constructivism, Ron Levi and Sungjoon Cho, who drew upon sociology to study the “fields” of international criminal law and international human rights practice and the social structure of the WTO, respectively, Adam Chilton, who presented on the potential of experimental methods for studying human rights, and Anne van Aaken, who explored behavioral law and economics’ implications for international legal theory.  What, if anything, binds these ten projects together?  Are there lessons to be learned about how these projects and methods can fit together into some greater whole?  These will be topics discussed in the book arising out of this project, but for now, a few thoughts on ways forward.

It can be tempting to see these projects as puzzle pieces, which when assembled in the correct order, reveal a larger picture of the international order. Each brings its own insights: Rational choice sets up testable, generalizable hypotheses about how states might interact given express assumptions about state behavior. Sociology, anthropology, and behavioral law and economics can test those hypotheses against real world scenarios, explaining why specific situations diverge from those expectations, whether as a result of social structures, culture, or human psychology. Experimental methods can help identify the actual preferences of international actors. Constructivist accounts can build upon sociology, anthropology, and psychology to explain where state preferences come from and how they change. Focused primarily on different, overlapping units of analysis—individual actors, the communities in which they practice, the culture in which their embedded, the states on behalf of whom they act, and the larger structures in which those states are embedded, these approaches might seem like natural complements—snapshots taken from one angle, which when spliced together might provide a panoramic view of the international system. Together, these accounts might provide a more complex account of the different processes, preferences, beliefs, and incentives that might drive the vast array of actors who operate in international law, whether grass-root activists, transnational norm advocates, technocratic experts, politicians, bureaucratic careerists, or diplomats. Where these levers converge or diverge may help explain both the emergence of consensus over rules and continued contestation. Successful strategies for achieving particular international goals will flip all the right switches.

But imagining all of these accounts as different harmonies converging in one glorious tune is too simplistic and overly optimistic; (more…)

[Tomer Broude is Vice-Dean and Sylvan M. Cohen Chair in Law at the Faculty of Law and Department of International Relations at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.]

How do negotiators of international treaty regimes engage with the ‘choice architecture’ inherent in the treaties they design? Are they aware of their own susceptibility to cognitive biases and do they take into account the behavioral weaknesses of their counterparts and constituencies? Jean Galbraith’s excellent study on human rights treaty flexibility cast light on this question, very neatly demonstrating on the basis of quantitative research that opt-in/opt-out provisions in treaties have significantly differential effects on subsequent choices. In a paper I am writing with Dr. Shai Moses (a former negotiator and affiliated with the Université de Genève) for a forthcoming handbook on trade in services (edited by Martin Roy and Pierre Sauvé), we explore the behavioral dynamics of negotiated choice architecture in the context of international services trade liberalization, and in particular in the ongoing negotiations towards a plurilateral Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA). Here are some of our initial observations on what seems to be going on in Geneva, from a behavioral perspective.

Negative/Positive Listing in Services Liberalization: The Rational Choice Puzzle

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In an 8 page decision handed down on January 9, Judge Paul Oetken found that the UN is immune in Delama Georges et. al v. UN, the so-called “Haiti Cholera case.” The decision is available at: http://www.ijdh.org/2015/01/projects/united-states-district-court-southern-district-of-new-york/ The finding that the UN is immune rests on two points: first, that the UN did not expressly waive its immunity under the Convention on Privileges and Immunities, and second, that any alleged inadequacy with the UN’s failure to offer a mode of settlement did not trump the requirement for express waiver. Relying on Brzak v. UN, Judge Oetken wrote:

“The Second Circuit’s decision in Brzak v. United Nations requires that Plaintiffs’ suit against the UN be dismissed for lack of subject matter jurisdiction pursuant to Rule 12(h)(3). In Brzak, the Second Circuit unequivocally held that “[a]s the CPIUN makes clear, the United Nations enjoys absolute immunity from suit unless ‘it has expressly waived its immunity.’” 597 F.3d at 112 (quoting CPIUN art. II, § 2). Here, no party contends that the UN has expressly waived its immunity. (Statement of Interest at 6 (“In this case, there has been no express waiver. To the contrary, the UN has repeatedly asserted its immunity.”).); (Dkt. No. 43, at 1 (“Waiver is not at issue here.”).) Accordingly, under the clear holding of Brzak, the UN is immune from Plaintiffs’ suit. In addition, MINUSTAH, as a subsidiary body of the UN, is also immune from suit.   … …. “nothing in the text of the CPIUN suggests that the absolute immunity of section 2 is conditioned on the UN’s providing the alternative modes of settlement contemplated by section 29. See Tachiona v. United States, 386 F.3d 205, 216 (2d Cir. 2004) (“When interpreting a treaty, we begin with the text of the treaty and the context in which the written words are used.” (internal quotation marks omitted) (interpreting the CPIUN)). As the Second Circuit held in Brzak, the language of section 2 of the CPIUN is clear, absolute, and does not refer to section 29: the UN is immune from suit unless it expressly waives its immunity.”

Although a decision upholding the UN’s immunity has always been predicted, the spirited hearing on the UN’s privileges and immunities in October provided an opportunity to explore other ways to frame the issue.   In particular, Judge Oetken’s analysis of the language of the treaty (the UN shall provide an appropriate mode of settlement) suggested that effective dispute resolution in private law matters was not a matter of discretion.

The ruling here is consistent with other recent mass torts challenges against the UN, for example, the Mothers of Srebrenica case in the Netherlands where the UN’s absolute immunity was upheld following the massacre of 1996. Nonetheless, two important distinctions with the Srebrenica case are apparent. First, an alternative was available: proceedings against the Dutch state have been successful in at least one case so far.  Second, the Srebrenica cases clearly involved questions of operational necessity which are typically considered public or policy matters.  Under the CPIUN, the UN is not under an obligation to provide appropriate modes of settlement if the matter is not of a private law nature.

The plaintiffs have indicated that they will appeal the ruling.   Meanwhile, two related actions are pending in US district courts.

[Harlan Cohen is an Associate Professor of Law at the University of Georgia School of Law]

The Precedent Puzzle

Every year, the Jessup team at the University of Georgia comes to me for a crash course in international law, and every year, I carefully explain to them that they can’t simply argue from precedents (as they would in their other moot court competitions), even precedents from the International Court of Justice, because precedent is not a source of law in international law as it is in domestic law. Nonetheless, I tell them—they, and their opponents, and the judges, will argue from precedent, from the ICJ and beyond, just as everyone in international law does. The trick, I tell them, is to be able explain why the supposedly irrelevant really is relevant.

This is emblematic. On the one hand, we are taught that as a matter of doctrine, judicial decisions construing international law are not in and of themselves law; they are not generally binding on future parties in future cases, even before the same tribunal. On the other hand, we also know that precedent is ubiquitous—from international arbitration, to international criminal law, to international human rights, precedents are argued and applied.

It’s not just that courts and tribunals cite their own precedent. On the contrary, courts and tribunals regularly cite the decisions of other unrelated ones: The precedents from one regional body are argued to others; precedents from human rights courts are argued to investment tribunals; precedents from ad hoc criminal tribunals are applied to domestic civil judgments. Nor is this phenomenon limited to arguments from, to, or in the shadow of international tribunals. The invocation of tribunal decisions as precedent has become part of the fabric of international legal discourse, structuring everyday arguments over the meaning of international law rules even far outside the shadow of any court. Russian and Crimean political leaders invoke the ICJ’s Advisory Opinion on Kosovo’s declaration of independence as precedent for the legality of Crimea’s secession and absorption into Russia. Advocacy groups like Human Rights Watch invoke ICTY decisions in open letters to governments on the legality of tactics used to fight terrorist groups. Academics invoke ICJ decisions in debates over the legality of the use of force against non-state actors. And perhaps most surprisingly, the Department of Justice responds to decisions of the ICTY, European Court of Human Rights, and the U.N. Committee Against Torture in internal, confidential government memoranda. Together with other interpretations of international law by expert committees, by international organizations, or by states, these decisions vie for status as authoritative statements of what international law requires.

But if this puzzling phenomenon is ubiquitous and even widely recognized, it has nonetheless, remained largely unexplained. Why, in the absence of any doctrinal requirement (in some cases, even permission), do some interpretations of international law by some courts, tribunals, or other bodies take on the force of precedent? Why do some interpretations come to be seen as authoritative, allowing some actors to wield them and forcing others to respond?

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