Opinio Juris » Blog Archive » Those 500,000 Doubloons (and What Dan Drezner Has to Do With Them)

Those 500,000 Doubloons (and What Dan Drezner Has to Do With Them)

by Peter Spiro

Last week’s report of a major shipwreck treasure recovery had me wondering about what the law is here. From a pretty quick study, it looks like this is mostly CIL, at least as far as sites outside territorial waters and the contiguous zone are concerned (that is, more than 24 miles from shore, as this one apparently is), in which case it’s the law of salvage (in which case the salvor gets some cut – probably quite significant in this kind of case – against any successors in interest to the treasure) versus the law of finds (in which case the divers get to keep it all).

Not that there haven’t been attempts to bring such recovery activities under conventional international law, with an eye to protecting such shipwrecks as archeological sites. The Law of the Sea Convention includes a provision requiring states “to protect objects of an archaeological nature found at sea and shall cooperate for that purpose,” and that such objects “shall be preserved or disposed of for the benefit of mankind as a whole, particular regard being paid to the preferential rights of the State or country of origin, or the State of cultural origin, or the State of historical and archaeological origin” (sections 303 and 149). That’s too vague to have much traction on the seabed.

By contrast, the UNESCO-sponsored Convention on the Protection of Underwater Cultural Heritage sets out a detailed regime weighted against “commercial exploitation” (which seems more understandable after visiting the tawdry website of the company involved in this latest find, Odyssey Marine Exploration - get your lumps of coal while they’re still available). It was opened for signature in 2001, but only has 14 sign-ons so far (it won’t go into force until it has 20). The Europeans and US are opposed. You can find the official line on US opposition in this extended treatment from the Legal Adviser’s Office, which stresses the Convention’s extension of coastal state jurisdiction and the failure adequately to protect state interests in their own sunken warships, wherever located.

No, Dan Drezner hasn’t donned a cooper helmet and a diving suit. In his latest book, All Politics is Global, Drezner comes up with a nifty typology of regulatory coordination in the form of a matrix, the dimensions of which are divergence of interests among great powers and then the divergence of interest between great powers and other international actors (it’s on page 79 if you have your copy handy). When you have low conflict among great powers and high conflict between the great powers and other actors, the model predicts a “club standards” regime. And that seems to be what has emerged in the context of treasure hunting, with the great powers reaching ad hoc agreements on particular finds (as was the case with the Titanic), at the same time as they also handle the issue through domestic law. The universalizing option of an open-to-all multilateral treaty gets left by the wayside.

Which is not to say that I think Drezner’s update of a great-powers methodology works across the board. Drezner takes globalization seriously, which is more than you can say about other rat-choice oriented state-based theorists. He also understands that any useful model today has to take account of non-states actors. But he ultimately concludes that although globalization “has led to the emergence of new issues to be analyzed by IR scholars, it does not imply that new paradigms are need to explain these issues.” Drezner minimizes NGOs as lacking the material resources to compel state action, which relegates them mostly to the role of delegatees and cheerleaders of state-driven regimes. In Drezner’s view, great-power agreement is both necessary and sufficient to the establishment of international regulatory regimes.

I don’t think that works in all cases, and even less so into the future. In the context of international labor standards, for example, Drezner dismisses codes of conduct with an unsourced paragraph. He does take on the “semi-deviant” (from his theory) case of TRIPS and public health (and the Doha Declaration), highlighting that AIDS is now processed through a security lens and as a threat to great power interests traditionally defined. But that seems to accept great-power framing at face value, and here again he ignores the civil society-corporate dynamic outside of an intergovernmental tent (or in ones more friendly than the WTO, like the World Health Organzation). The book also fails to confront the trendlines. It concedes that NGOs are more powerful than they used to be; couldn’t we expect them to become more so, and if not, why not? All that said, the book is clearly an important addition to the IR literature, and one that should be of interest to IL scholars.

Update: As Roger notes below, Drezner responds here. His first point: predictions of the continuing rise of non-state actors is unfalsifiable. Another reason IL scholars have things better than our colleagues in poli sci — we can engage in rampant speculation! (And who’s to say the IL team would lose in a real-space brawl? Fantasy academic boxing, anyone?)

Seriously, if conditions give rise to certain trends (like the emergence of codes of conduct that measurably affect corporate behavior), the projection of those trends into the future (while not falsifiable) is more than guesswork. Otherwise you end up with static analyses, which are fine in static times but not in unstable ones.

Dan goes on to argue that states will fight back. I take the point, but my reflex here is that while states can compete against each other it’s something else to compete with a different type of entity. (To make an imperfect sports analogy, the Yankees can take on the Red Sox but not the Redskins.) I know that delegation and cooption are part of the possible answer, but over the long run those are rear-guard actions, not frontal assaults. There is also an assumption in the delegation model (that is, that NGOs will be brought into the service of states) that there aren’t any agency problems.

As for the question of whether civil society can influence the establishment of regimes involving non-democracies, it’s true that governments beyond the US and EU are pretty resistant (witness the serious pushback over the relatively trivial issue of NGO amicus briefs before the WTO’s dispute settlement process). But that doesn’t bear on NGO capacities to influence those states outside negotiating rooms (and to the extent they exercise influence from the streets — proverbial or otherwise — that influence is felt on the inside as well). China is the toughest nut to crack, because of its market power — the test case will be the Yahoo/Google/China human rights dust-up. Everyone else is pretty clear game by now, and not just through domestic politics (as the Liberal model would have it). But as Dan says, stay tuned!

No Related Post

May 21st, 2007 - 2:51 PM EDT | Trackback Link |

http://opiniojuris.org/2007/05/21/those-500000-doubloons-and-what-dan-drezner-has-to-do-with-them/

8 Responses

In case you missed it, Daniel Drezner responds to Peter today in this post. Drezner writes, “Now I could respond to this in the time-honored tradition that IR scholars deal with IL scholars — namely, dragging them into a small, dark corner and beating them up, to symbolically demonstrate how coercion trumps the law. But that would be wrong. So let’s engage Spiro’s argument on its merits.”

Roger Alford

5.22.2007
at 11:49 am EST Roger Alford
apology (Drezner) v. utopia (Spiro) redux?

5.23.2007
at 3:29 am EST Patrick S. O'Donnell
Patrick, Not utopia! Non-state actors are not angelic, and their exercise of power will have to be monitored and constrained as with other exercises of power. It’s trickier to hold them accountable, though, given that their power is of an unfamiliar description. But that doesn’t mean they can be wished away.

5.23.2007
at 8:30 am EST Peter Spiro
Peter,

I don’t intend ‘utopia’ in the literal or historical sense (see William Galston’s Justice and the Human Good, 1980), nor in a pejorative sense (Karl Popper and…), but rather in Martti Koskenniemi’s stipulative sense in From Apology to Utopia: The Structure of International Legal Argument (2005 ed.). Thus, think your argument or its assumptions do tend toward the ‘utopian’ end of the spectrum and Drezner’s toward the ‘apologetic’ side. If it sounds less loaded, your is what Koskenniemi terms a “descending” pattern of justification while his is an “ascending” pattern of justification. Yours, in other words, is premised on the assumption or at least possibility ‘that a normative code overrides [or can override] individual State behaviour will or interest. As a legal method, it works so as to produce conclusions about State obligations from this code. The latter is premised on the assumption that State behaviour, will and interest are determining of the law. If State practice will and interest point in some direction, the law muct point in that direction, too. This view [namely, Derezner's] starts from the given existence of State behaviour, will and interest and attempts to produce a normative code from them.’

Let’s call the utopian/apologetic or descending/ascending argumentative forms (in international law) Weberian ideal types; still, I think it does capture the structural features that account for the substance of the debate. I don’t know if this characterization makes it any more palatable to you Peter and of course I may be utterly mistaken….

5.23.2007
at 9:46 am EST Patrick S. O'Donnell
erratum: ‘Thus, I think your argument…’

I should have said that there’s nothing about the utopian/descending argument that implies non-State actors are angelic nor nothing that rules out the fact that their exercise of power will have to be monitored and constrained.

5.23.2007
at 9:50 am EST Patrick S. O'Donnell
Patrick, okay, I missed the reference in my early morning haze. Interesting observation. My only amendment would be add that in some ways I’m looking beyond the state altogether. What would Koskenniemi do with that?

5.23.2007
at 2:04 pm EST Peter Spiro
I suppose insofar as that takes us beyond Liberalism (i.e., that it is truly beyond raison d’état), there’s not much he can do in terms of his structurally descriptive diagnosis of international legal argument, unless, perhaps, looking beyond the state altogether still falls within the purview of what a ‘competent international lawyer’ does, in this instance, progressive international lawyers acting ‘normative[ly] in the small’ as part of an empancipatory project (cf. too the Epilogue of the 2005 ed.; in this case transcending the state would be on the order of Hegel’s Aufhebung). On the other hand, if looking beyond the state involves an imaginative engagement with possibilities that are alternatives to either contentment with the status quo or indulgence in phantasy, if looking beyond the state involves ‘persuading people that experiments in living are worth a try and that in the absence of a natural social order every actual institution, too, remains only an experiment,’ then I suppose Koskenniemi could only be delightfully intrigued if not heartened.

5.23.2007
at 2:53 pm EST Patrick S. O'Donnell
http://www.autosearch.envy.nu/auto1/electrodes1.html auto body dealer paint repair

http://www.autosearch.envy.nu/auto1/electrodes2.html auto car dealer new

http://www.autosearch.envy.nu/auto1/electrodes3.html auto car dealer used

http://www.autosearch.envy.nu/auto1/electrodes4.html auto cheap part price wholesale

http://www.autosearch.envy.nu/auto1/electrodes5.html auto chrysler dealer plymouth

http://www.autosearch.envy.nu/auto1/electrodes6.html auto dealer ford part

http://www.autosearch.envy.nu/auto1/electrodes7.html auto dealer houston

http://www.autosearch.envy.nu/auto1/electrodes8.html auto dealer orlando

http://www.autosearch.envy.nu/auto1/electrodes9.html auto dealer site web

http://www.autosearch.envy.nu/auto1/electrodes10.html auto dealer tire

http://www.autosearch.envy.nu/auto1/electrodes11.html auto dealer used

http://www.autosearch.envy.nu/auto1/electrodes12.html auto dealer volkswagen

http://www.autosearch.envy.nu/auto1/electrodes13.html cheap auto

http://www.autosearch.envy.nu/auto1/electrodes14.html cheap auto body part

http://www.autosearch.envy.nu/auto1/electrodes15.html cheap auto insurance geico

http://www.autosearch.envy.nu/auto1/electrodes16.html cheap auto insurance quote

http://www.autosearch.envy.nu/auto1/electrodes17.html cheap auto paint

http://www.autosearch.envy.nu/auto1/electrodes18.html cheap auto part

http://www.autosearch.envy.nu/auto1/electrodes19.html progressiv cheap auto insurance

http://www.autosearch.envy.nu/auto1/electrodes20.html progressive cheap auto insurance

http://www.autosearch.envy.nu/auto2/squillas1.html dealer toyota

http://www.autosearch.envy.nu/auto2/squillas2.html riverside toyota

http://www.autosearch.envy.nu/auto2/squillas3.html toyota

http://www.autosearch.envy.nu/auto2/squillas4.html toyota austin

http://www.autosearch.envy.nu/auto2/squillas5.html toyota bergen

http://www.autosearch.envy.nu/auto2/squillas6.html toyota boston

http://www.autosearch.envy.nu/auto2/squillas7.html toyota center

http://www.autosearch.envy.nu/auto2/squillas8.html toyota chicago

http://www.autosearch.envy.nu/auto2/squillas9.html toyota houston

http://www.autosearch.envy.nu/auto2/squillas10.html toyota jersey city new jersey

http://www.autosearch.envy.nu/auto2/squillas11.html toyota lawrence new hampshire

http://www.autosearch.envy.nu/auto2/squillas12.html toyota los angeles

http://www.autosearch.envy.nu/auto2/squillas13.html toyota middlesex

http://www.autosearch.envy.nu/auto2/squillas14.html toyota monmouth new jersey

http://www.autosearch.envy.nu/auto2/squillas15.html toyota nassau

http://www.autosearch.envy.nu/auto2/squillas16.html toyota new york

http://www.autosearch.envy.nu/auto2/squillas17.html toyota newark

http://www.autosearch.envy.nu/auto2/squillas18.html toyota oakland

http://www.autosearch.envy.nu/auto2/squillas19.html toyota orange county

http://www.autosearch.envy.nu/auto2/squillas20.html toyota part

http://www.autosearch.envy.nu/auto2/squillas21.html toyota philadelphia

http://www.autosearch.envy.nu/auto2/squillas22.html toyota portland oregon

http://www.autosearch.envy.nu/auto2/squillas23.html toyota sacramento

http://www.autosearch.envy.nu/auto2/squillas24.html toyota san antonio

http:/www.autosearch.envy.nu/auto2/squillas25.html toyota san francisco

http://www.autosearch.envy.nu/auto2/squillas26.html toyota san jose california

http://www.autosearch.envy.nu/auto2/squillas27.html toyota supra

http://www.autosearch.envy.nu/auto2/squillas28.html toyota trenton new jersey

http://www.autosearch.envy.nu/auto2/squillas29.html toyota truck

http://www.autosearch.envy.nu/auto2/squillas30.html toyota washington dc

http://www.autosearch.envy.nu/auto3/installments1.html advanced auto

http://www.autosearch.envy.nu/auto3/installments2.html arrow auto cr gif i wheeling

http://www.autosearch.envy.nu/auto3/installments3.html auto air conditioning heating

http://www.autosearch.envy.nu/auto3/installments4.html auto body

http://www.autosearch.envy.nu/auto3/installments5.html auto body paint

http://www.autosearch.envy.nu/auto3/installments6.html auto body part

http://www.autosearch.envy.nu/auto3/installments7.html auto cr gif i spacer

http://www.autosearch.envy.nu/auto3/installments8.html auto dealer

http://www.autosearch.envy.nu/auto3/installments9.html auto detailing

http://www.autosearch.envy.nu/auto3/installments10.html auto fellatio

http://www.autosearch.envy.nu/auto3/installments11.html auto insurance rate

http://www.autosearch.envy.nu/auto3/installments12.html auto loan calculator

http://www.autosearch.envy.nu/auto3/installments13.html auto news

http://www.autosearch.envy.nu/auto3/installments14.html auto oil lubrication

http://www.autosearch.envy.nu/auto3/installments15.html auto part accessory

http://www.autosearch.envy.nu/auto3/installments16.html auto repair shop

http://www.autosearch.envy.nu/auto3/installments17.html auto trader.ca

http://www.autosearch.envy.nu/auto3/installments18.html auto zone auto part

http://www.autosearch.envy.nu/auto3/installments19.html bad credit auto loan

http://www.autosearch.envy.nu/auto3/installments20.html geico auto insurance

http://www.autosearch.envy.nu/auto3/installments21.html grand theft auto 3

http://www.autosearch.envy.nu/auto3/installments22.html grand theft auto 3 cheat

http://www.autosearch.envy.nu/auto3/installments23.html grand theft auto san andreas cheat

http://www.autosearch.envy.nu/auto3/installments24.html grand theft auto san andreas cheat code ps2

http://www.autosearch.envy.nu/auto3/installments25.html grand theft auto vice city

http://www.autosearch.envy.nu/auto3/installments26.html napa auto part

http://www.autosearch.envy.nu/auto3/installments27.html new auto part

http://www.autosearch.envy.nu/auto3/installments28.html o 39 reilly auto part

http://www.autosearch.envy.nu/auto3/installments29.html pep boy auto part

http://www.autosearch.envy.nu/auto3/installments30.html used auto

http://www.autosearch.envy.nu/auto4/overmild1.html airport car rental

http://www.autosearch.envy.nu/auto4/overmild2.html alamo car rental

http://www.autosearch.envy.nu/auto4/overmild3.html auto refinance

http://www.autosearch.envy.nu/auto4/overmild4.html buy used car

http://www.autosearch.envy.nu/auto4/overmild5.html car crash

http://www.autosearch.envy.nu/auto4/overmild6.html car game

http://www.autosearch.envy.nu/auto4/overmild7.html car movie

http://www.autosearch.envy.nu/auto4/overmild8.html car online

http://www.autosearch.envy.nu/auto4/overmild9.html car stereo

http://www.autosearch.envy.nu/auto4/overmild10.html concept car

http://www.autosearch.envy.nu/auto4/overmild11.html disney car

http://www.autosearch.envy.nu/auto4/overmild12.html nissan car

http://www.autosearch.envy.nu/auto4/overmild13.html race car

http://www.autosearch.envy.nu/auto4/overmild14.html rc car

http://www.autosearch.envy.nu/auto4/overmild15.html sell my car

http://www.autosearch.envy.nu/auto4/overmild16.html sell used car

http://www.autosearch.envy.nu/auto4/overmild17.html the car

http://www.autosearch.envy.nu/auto4/overmild18.html toyota car

http://www.autosearch.envy.nu/auto4/overmild19.html used car cleveland ohio

http://www.autosearch.envy.nu/auto4/overmild20.html used car columbus ohio

http://www.autosearch.envy.nu/auto4/overmild21.html used car fort worth

http://www.autosearch.envy.nu/auto4/overmild22.html used car kansas city

http://www.autosearch.envy.nu/auto4/overmild23.html used car miami

http://www.autosearch.envy.nu/auto4/overmild24.html used car newark

http://www.autosearch.envy.nu/auto4/overmild25.html used car oakland

http://www.autosearch.envy.nu/auto4/overmild26.html used car orange county

http://www.autosearch.envy.nu/auto4/overmild27.html used car riverside

http://www.autosearch.envy.nu/auto4/overmild28.html used car san antonio

http://www.autosearch.envy.nu/auto4/overmild29.html used car san diego

http://www.autosearch.envy.nu/auto4/overmild30.html used car st louis

5.26.2007
at 4:59 am EST autosearcher15957

Trackbacks and Pingbacks

There are no trackbacks or pingbacks associated with this post at this time.

Those 500,000 Doubloons (and What Dan Drezner Has to Do With Them)

Related Posts

8 Responses

Trackbacks and Pingbacks