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14 Oct

[Faiza Patel is the Co-Director of the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law]

In the decade that I worked at the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons in The Hague, few people outside the arms control community knew about my employer. Now, of course, everyone is talking about the OPCW as its inspectors undertake the difficult and dangerous task of monitoring the destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons stockpile. The award of the Nobel Peace Prize to this previously low-profile outfit has only piqued interest further.

So what is the OPCW and what does it do?

The OPCW is an inter-governmental organization charged with making sure that countries comply with their obligations under the Chemical Weapons Convention. For the past 16 years it has been doing so without much fanfare. As the Nobel committee made clear, the OPCW’s contribution to world peace is based on this long record, not just for stepping up in Syria.

The Chemical Weapons Convention, which came into force in 1997, is one of the most important achievements of the post-Cold War period. It is unique amongst arms control treaties because it bans not just the use, but also the stockpiling, of an entire category of weapons (In contrast, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty allows the five permanent members of the Security Council to maintain nuclear arsenals, although they are meant to be working towards eliminating them.) Countries that join the treaty are required to declare any chemical weapons they hold, as well as related facilities, and to get rid of them under international supervision. They must also undertake to never develop a chemical weapons capacity.

Under the treaty, countries were required to destroy their chemical weapons by 2012. Substantial progress has been made towards this goal, with approximately 80 percent of chemical agent stockpiles destroyed. Unfortunately, the two major possessor states, the United States and the Russian Federation, have not yet finished. They are, however, slated to finish up over the next few years and most experts are confident that both countries will eventually fulfill this commitment.

In addition to monitoring the elimination of chemical weapons, the OPCW has important non-proliferation mandate that will continue even after all weapons stockpiles are gone. Facilities producing dual use chemicals – such as Thiodiglycol, which is used to make ink but can also be used to produce mustard gas – are periodically inspected to ensure that toxic substances are not diverted to weapons uses. Since 1997, the organization has undertaken some 1900 of these types of inspections. Of course this represents only a fraction of the industrial facilities that deal in chemicals that could be turned into weapons, but the fact that countries allow inspections increases confidence that they are committed to the goals of the treaty.

Despite this impressive record, the OPCW faces a number of challenges as it embarks on the Syrian mission.

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14 Oct

[Carsten Stahn is Professor of International Criminal Law and Global Justice at Leiden University and Programme Director of the Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies. He is Co-Editor-in-Chief of the Leiden Journal of International Law, Executive Editor of the Criminal Law Forum and project leader of the Jus Post Bellum Project. An earlier post on this appears here.] Harold Koh and Daniel Bethlehem deserve credit for having launched this important and timely debate. Koh has formulated an excellent reply to critiques to his post which stands in the best tradition of debate over the prohibition of the use of force. As we all known, Article 2 (4) has been declared dead and rejuvenated too many times. It is thus legitimate to have struggles as to the proper way forward. I see merit in the need to map ‘current law onto modern reality’.  But I would argue that some of the underlying elements of his existing proposition of an ‘affirmative defence are rooted in tensions that are unlikely to be solved through discourse over the creation a new substantive exception to the prohibition of the use of force. A case-by-case assessment may be ultimately better than an abstract rule to accommodate the problems inherent in a formulation of a doctrine that has been controversial for centuries.  I would like to highlight three aspects that may require deeper reflection in the debate: (i) narratives regarding ‘progress’, (ii) the relationship between ‘threat of force’ and ‘use of force’, and (iii) the choice of the appropriate methodology for the way ahead.   1. Observational standpoints and narratives of progress Firstly, it is important to clarify observational standpoints. Koh presents change to the rule a ‘progress’ and adherence to it as stalemate. I have doubt whether the debate can be adequately addressed, let alone resolved, based on the dichotomy between a progress-adverse ‘absolutist’ view, represented by the illegal per se rule, and a modern ‘reformist ‘view’ which would argue that the rule is not ‘black and white’. It is an oversimplification to divide scholarly opinion into these two camps. Most international lawyers would acknowledge that the Charter is a ‘dynamic instrument’. It is a given, and not a point of controversy’ that it should be interpreted in light of its objectives and purposes. There are cases in which Art. 2 (IV) does not prohibit the use of force, such as intervention by invitation which raises difficult issues of the legitimacy consent in the context of civil war (as noted by Jordan Paust). The ICJ recognized in Nicaragua (Judgment, 27 June 1986, para. 175) that conventional and customary law on the use of force are not necessarily identical in content.  Even proponents of a strict interpretation of Article 2 (4) recognize ‘shades of grey’ and options for development. There may thus more agreement than divide. In my view, Koh takes a shortcut by criticizing international lawyers for having ‘become more comfortable stating rules than in figuring out how international law might help to push unfolding events towards the right resolution’. The roots of the controversy lie deeper. Koh’s position is based on a specific approach towards international law. His argument is based on the premise that international law is an instrument of problem-solving and a tool to facilitate decision-making processes over war and peace. This approach advocates different prerogatives than a more systemic vision of international law that regards norms and institutions as the centre of a normative system that protects collective interests and values and constrains behavior. This tension has been inherent in approaches to international law for decades. The main problem with Koh’s position is not so much the normative content of the proposition, i.e. the claim that use of force may in some circumstances be in the spirit of Charter principles and help ‘protect human rights. The fundamental difficulty of Koh’s argument is that it reduces the options for accountability of military action.  It shifts the balance from a centralized enforcement system to a decentralized system where nations become the arbiters over the legality of their claims to intervention. This causes fears and anxieties among many UN members. Koh’s plea for new abstract regulation would give formal recognition to the claim that the Council is an option à la carte than can be turned on and switched off in ‘hard cases’ where there is no agreement. Giving up this constraint weakens leverage for compliance and the need to justify choices of behavior before a collective forum, in circumstances in which international law is most important in debate. This is a position that many nations will be reluctant to sacrifice for the gain of greater clarity on the rule. One of the main dilemmas of ‘humanitarian intervention’ has been the question of ‘agency’, i.e. that action is carried out in the name of others. It has been inherent in humanitarianism since it its inception. R2P mitigated this dilemma through recourse to collective response schemes.  Koh’s suggested new rule turns a ‘blind eye’ to this. It fails to engage with the question how intervening nations could claim authority to speak for others/victims.  In the African Union, this dilemma has been mitigated by an institutional solution, i.e. consent under Articles 4 (h) and (j) of the Constitutive Act which recognizes
‘the right of the Union to intervene in a member State pursuant to a decision of the Assembly in respect of grave circumstances, namely; war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity’.
Koh’s suggested norm does not address such institutional safeguards.  It simply uses institutional support as one optional parameter to support the claim for legality. He suggests that the claim for exemption from wrongfulness would be  ‘strenghtened’ if intervening nations could demonstrate ‘that the action was collective’. This may simply not be enough.
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13 Oct

Further to the topic of how the U.S. can/should combat terrorism without, as President Obama puts it, “keeping America on a perpetual wartime footing,” Marty Lederman and Mary DeRosa have a post up at Just Security highlighting the recent U.S. operations in Somalia and Libya as examples of what that future might look like. Among its features, a preference...

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13 Oct

One of the most distressing aspects of the admissibility decision in al-Senussi is PTC I's remarkable unwillingness to question Libya's strategic invocation of its precarious "security situation." As described by Libya, that situation really is magic -- somehow managing to prevent the Libyan government from doing anything to protect al-Senussi's rights without preventing the government from prosecuting al-Senussi. Consider the issue I...

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13 Oct

Events The Cassese Initiative is pleased to inform you about its coming workshop on the topic "Enforced Disappearance: Challenges to Accountability under International Law", which will be held at the European University Institute in Florence, on Friday 25 October 2013. Register here. From the organization: "Enforced disappearance remains one of the most heinous human rights violations. From the ‘political cleansing’ campaigns of...

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12 Oct

Pre-Trial Chamber I has granted Libya's challenge to the admissibility of the case against Abdullah al-Senussi. This is obviously a major win for the Libyan government, especially given that the very same PTC denied its admissibility challenge regarding Saif Gaddafi. There is much to like in the PTC's decision. It takes a very broad approach to the "same conduct" requirement with regard...

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12 Oct

This week on Opinio Juris, we had two guest posts from Tomer Broude, the first giving an introduction to behavioral law and the second discussing a methodological framework to behavioral law. Carsten Stahn also delivered a guest post on cautioning against a new affirmative defense to Article 2(4) of the UN Charter, in response to argumentation put forth by Harold Koh's Just...

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11 Oct

[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.] In my previous post, I tried to briefly introduce the merits of “Behavioral International Law”. Experimental research has shown that in many cases human behavior diverges from theoretical assumptions about rationality. Prospect theory, loss aversion, endowment effects, anchoring, hindsight bias, availability bias, conformity effects, framing effects – the list of experimentally proven, systematic diversions from perfect rationality in human behavior is long. The confines of a blog post preclude detailed discussion of any of these biases and heuristics; the literature in cognitive psychology is vast. The important point, pursued by scholars over the last decade or so, is that this knowledge of actual, rather than hypothesized or assumed, human behavior, can have significant implications for legal regulation. Why should this not be the case with respect to public international law? A number of objections may arise, and I will mention two of them briefly here. The first would be that cognitive psychology and behavioral economics relate primarily to the conduct of individuals as (obviously) unitary actors, while the main subjects of international law are collective entities, primarily states. This presents a type of external validity problem: can the knowledge we have on human behavior, carry over to other actors?
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10 Oct

Your weekly selection of international law and international relations headlines from around the world: Middle East A team of UN disarmament inspectors in Syria have begun the process of destroying the country's chemical weapons and production facilities. Turkey has lifted a decades-old ban on headscarves in the civil service as part of a package of reforms by the government meant to improve democracy. Asia Asia-Pacific...

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10 Oct

In my previous post on the Taylor appeal, I noted two troubling aspects of the Appeals Chamber's judgment concerning customary international law: (1) its erroneous belief that legal principles that narrow criminal responsibility have to have a customary foundation; and (2) its hypocritical affirmation that recklesness is the mens rea of aiding and abetting (which goes beyond the ICTY and ICTR)...

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09 Oct

[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.]

I’d like first to thank the Opinio Juris team, and particularly Prof. Chris Borgen, for inviting me to present my article manuscript, “Behavioral International Law”, in this online forum. Today I will devote my post to general observations on this project. In my second post I will discuss the range of available research methodologies in this area. A third post will discuss some concrete examples of behavioral research in international law.

Behavioral science has in recent years been applied successfully to many legal issues. A field that just a decade ago was entirely new now merits its own research handbooks (one forthcoming with OUP in 2014, edited by my Hebrew University colleagues Doron Teichman and Eyal Zamir). Behavioral research is now embedded in national and regulatory policy-making that clearly interacts with international affairs (see Cass Sunstein’s article on “Nudges.gov” here; the UK’s Behavioural Insights Team; and this conference in December on EU law and behavioral science). No less importantly, the groundbreaking work of cognitive psychologists such as Daniel Kahneman and the late Amos Tversky has been greatly popularized in a series of popular science books (see here, here, and here), making it more accessible to lawyers and policy-makers (for better or for worse).

Simplified, the central concept underlying research in this field is the recognition that human cognitive capabilities are not perfect or infinite; our rationality is ‘bounded’. The human brain makes shortcuts in judgment and decision-making that diverge from expected utility theory. Limiting aspects of bounded rationality and the shortcuts taken to overcome them - generally known as biases and heuristics - inevitably cause human decisions that would be regarded as erroneous if compared with theoretically/perfectly rational outcomes. As I explain in the article, this should at least give pause to standard rational choice approaches to law in general and international law in particular, whose assumptions about the rationality of states and other actors are often distant from behavioral realities.

Having said this, it is important to understand that behavioral economics does not aspire to replace one ideal-type decision maker (a perfectly rational one) with another (rationally imperfect) one.

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09 Oct

After receiving a staunch “no” from the UN earlier this year, lawyers for Haiti Cholera victims filed a class action lawsuit in the Southern District of New York today.  The complaint is available here.   The complaint seeks certification of a class that is composed of cholera victims who are Haitian and US citizens. The basis of the class action is...

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