General

Bond v. United States and the Non-Use of the Treaty Power

Has the federal government ever put Missouri v. Holland to work? I don't think so, though I always hesitate to state it categorically. The Supreme Court's 1920 decision in Holland squarely held that the Treaty Power adds something to other enumerated federal authorities. But there appears to be no instance in which the federal government has actually used a treaty...

Weekend Roundup: October 26-November 1, 2013

This week on Opinio Juris, we held a symposium on Chevron and the rise of arbitral power introduced here by Michael D. Goldhaber. Comments were by Christoph Schreuer, Anthea Roberts, and Muthucumaraswamy Sornarajah. Michael's response is here. In follow up on earlier symposia, Anupam Chander posted his reply to the comments in last week's book symposium on The Electronic Silk Road and Anne van Aaken responded to...

The Improbable Bond v. United States

As foreign relations law wonks gear up for next Tuesday's argument in Bond v. United States, I wanted to ask, how did we end up with this case, anyway? The small-time, slightly sordid facts are (for classroom purposes) a lawprof's dream. For those of you who haven't been following along, the case involves a love triangle in which a wife...

ASIL Mid-Year Meeting in New York

International lawyers here in New York are gearing up for ASIL’s mid-year Meeting.  The program is available here, which kicks off tonight with a reception and talk at the UN. I’m delighted to have co-chaired the Research Forum with Tim Meyer from Georgia this year.   Tim and I assembled a wonderful Research Forum Committee this year, who conducted a double-blind selection...

Weekly News Wrap: Thursday, October 31, 2013

Your weekly selection of international law and international relations headlines from around the world: Middle East Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, has said he is open to peace talks but insisted that they would not go ahead unless foreign nations stopped supporting rebel fighters. Reuters has an Insight about starvation being used in Syria as a "war tactic" and Foreign Policy offers a glimpse inside...

Guest Post: Behavioral International Law and Economics: Benchmark and Applications

[Prof. Dr. Anne van Aaken is Professor of Law and Economics, Legal Theory, Public International Law and European Law at the University of Sankt Gallen, Switzerland.] I am delighted that Tomer Broude commented on Opinio Juris on the potential and the pitfalls of the use of behavioral economics in international law and am equally happy that I am able to follow up on this. I will do so in two steps: the first part will address the benchmark against which Behavioral International Law and Economics (BIntLE) should be measured in my view. The second mentions some of the applications I suggest in my paper and in an earlier article. Tomer and I are currently planning a book together, bringing together the insights of both of our papers and extending them considerably. In his introduction to the topic, Tomer comments on the relationship of “Behavioral International Law” to rational choice approaches in international law and international relations. Behavioral Economics is an empirically validated theory about human behavior. There are of course competing theories in social science. The psychological research is not free-floating and it is not used as such in the field of international law and international relations. Tomer suggests as a basis from which to depart sociological approaches. Sociology as such does not have a unified behavioral model, thus one would need to clarify which sociological theories are drawn upon (e.g. the homo sociologicus as advanced by Ralf Dahrendorf (micro theory of individual behavior), system theory (macro theory), etc.). I suggest as a benchmark rational choice theory, for two reasons.  First, the psychological insights we use are commonly named behavioral economics, given that this research tests and challenges the rational choice hypothesis to a hitherto unknown extent (and the psychologist Daniel Kahneman won the Nobel prize in economics). But behavioral economics is not yet at a stage where it has a unified behavioral theory replacing rational choice: many heuristics and biases depend on the decision-making context (those have to be studied carefully). Rational choice is still the benchmark against which the insights are measured. Second, the parsimony of rational choice makes it a natural starting point. Since behavioral research adds complexity (something which every academic should try to avoid if a simpler explanation is possible for answering a certain research question), it has to show that it generates better insights and is able to explain phenomena which cannot be explained drawing on the rational choice approach alone. To use a coin minted by Einstein: “Everything should be as simple as it can be, but not simpler.” A rational choice approach might sometimes be too simple. Tomer and I share the belief that behavioral economics is able to generate more and better insights to the functioning of international law and we share also the deliberations on the methodological problems this might generate. Because of the weight I put on parsimony, I shift the burden of proof on BintLE to show that it might generate better insights than a rational choice approach to international law. This has to be done step by step, analyzing different fields of general and special international law. After all, it will be the empirics which will validate (or not) the research hypotheses advanced by any theory: the proof of the pudding is in the eating. Having said that, let me turn to some promising insights, adding to Tomer´s suggestions in his paper and his post.

NSA Files: An Emerging Human Right to Privacy?

Josh Gerstein has this interesting piece at Politico on how the citizenship divide is breaking down as a defensible perimeter in the legal justification of electronic surveillance. It's clear where the old reflex is coming from: lawyers steeped in a constitutional tradition that distinguishes citizens from foreigners (and US territory from foreign territory) in the application of constitutional rights. (The...

Weekend Roundup: October 19-25, 2013

This week on Opinio Juris, Ken contributed a post on legally distinct corporate entities and agency theory in Bauman v Daimler AG, Chris wrote about Russia's Realpolitik towards former USSR members that are seeking closer contact with the EU, and Deborah wrote about due process in targeting. Julian noticed how Russia had taken a leaf out of China's book by walking out of an...

Due Process in Targeting

It has been an eventful news week in the universe of U.S. targeting debates. Amnesty and Human Rights Watch released their reports detailing some of the civilian costs of drone strikes. A bit earlier, UN Special Rapporteur on human rights and countering terrorism, Ben Emmerson, issued an interim report on his findings thus far about targeted killing (though I think...