[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

(more…)

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?

(more…)

[Elena Baylis is Associate Professor of Law at the University of Pittsburgh]

In my role as commentator for the in-person symposium that preceded this online symposium, I took on the task of identifying common themes among the symposium papers. This essay focuses on a few of the ideas drawn from the papers as a whole.

Treating international law as behavior engenders several kinds of complexity centered on a set of classic epistemological questions: what do we know and how do we know it? By using theoretical and methodological approaches drawn from sociology, anthropology, international relations, and other disciplines, we can observe aspects of international legal behavior that are not accessible through traditional legal analysis. The symposium participants describe international legal actions such as development of expertise, engagement with deadlines, and epistemic cooperation, by a wide variety of actors, including individuals, institutions, organizations, states and divisions thereof, and networks and communities. Even apart from the value of the analysis developed to explain and categorize this behavior, there is some satisfaction simply in exposing these many actors and modes of action to our view. However, doing so requires grappling with difficult methodological, theoretical, and conceptual questions.

(more…)

So this is a well-intentioned but problematic idea:

The Palestinians want the International Criminal Court (ICC) to launch an investigation into the death of Yasser Arafat, a senior Fatah official announced on Sunday.

Jamal Muheissen, member of the Fatah Central Committee, claimed that Israel was responsible for the death of Arafat, who died in November 2004.

“This file will be presented to the International Criminal Court,” Muheissen told the Palestinian Shms News Agency. “We want to bring the Israeli occupation to trial for every crime it committed against our people.”

[snip]

Arafat, who signed the 1993 Oslo interim peace accords with Israel but then led an uprising after subsequent talks broke down in 2000, died aged 75.

His death came four weeks after he fell ill following a meal, suffering from vomiting and stomach pains, in his Ramallah compound while surrounded by Israeli tanks.

To begin with, even if the Court had jurisdiction, it is unlikely that the OTP would investigate Arafat’s death. There are indeed significant questions about his death, and it would not surprise me if Israel is responsible for it. But the case is far from clear, and the OTP would be hard-pressed to investigate it effectively. So the OTP would almost certainly choose — if it ever opened a formal investigation into the situation in Palestine, which I continue to strongly doubt — to focus on much more obvious crimes committed by Palestine and Israel.

The jurisdictional issue, however, is the real kicker. Arafat died in 2004, so in principle his death is within the ICC’s temporal jurisdiction. And unlike my friend Dov Jacobs, I don’t think Palestine is categorically prohibited from accepting the Court’s jurisdiction earlier than 13 June 2014 through a second Art. 12(3) declaration. But does Palestine really want to force the Court to determine whether it was a state in 2004? The first declaration was very smart — although the judges will still have to decide at some point on Palestinian statehood, the fact that the declaration does not purport to accept jurisdiction prior to UNGA Resolution 67/19 makes it very unlikely the judges will second-guess the OTP. All bets would be off, though, with a second declaration that looked back to 2004. There would be no conflict between the judiciary and the OTP if the judges refused to conclude that Palestine was a state when Arafat died; on the contrary, the OTP seems to believe that Palestine was not a state — at least for purposes of ICC membership — until the UNGA upgraded its status. Moreover, the judges can’t exactly relish having to determine not only when Palestine became a state, but also the proper test for making that determination. So we can expect them to take a very conservative approach to Palestinian statehood.

There is little question that the case for Palestine’s statehood has received a significant boost by its membership in the ICC. The last thing Palestine should do now is risk undoing all of its good work by pushing the Court to investigate an unclear event committed more than a decade ago.

[Tim Meyer is an Associate Professor of Law at the University of Georgia School of Law.]

For the last several decades, the central problem in much institutionalist scholarship has been how to design what I refer to as credible commitment regimes. Such regimes establish, or create fora in which states can later establish, substantive rules of conduct to coordinate state behavior across an increasingly wide range of issues. On the assumption that rational, self-interested states will cheat on these conduct rules if it is in their interest to do so, credible commitment regimes also create enforcement mechanisms to alter state incentives. Monitoring, verification, and dispute resolution mechanisms publicize violations, authorize retaliation, and in some instances award monetary damages. For example, the WTO agreements establish rules on the kinds of limits states may place on international trade. The WTO also creates the Dispute Settlement Body, which serves as a vehicle to further clarify the content of those rules, publicize violations, and reduce the cost of retaliation by defining when it is legally permissible.

Below the radar, however, a class of international agreements have emerged that seek to coordinate state behavior through the production and regulation of information, rather than the creation of credible commitments. Following a robust literature on epistemic communities, I refer to these international regimes as epistemic institutions or epistemic agreements, and the phenomenon as epistemic cooperation. In its purest form, epistemic cooperation does not legally require states to take action on the regulated issue. Instead, it merely requires them to produce and share information with each other. The aim is to encourage states to coordinate their activities based on this information, rather than based on a legal rule made credible through international institutions.

Examples of epistemic institutions that work in this way abound. (more…)

[Jean Galbraith is an Assistant Professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School]

One mechanism through which international law regulates the behavior of states and other actors is deadlines.   Although little studied, deadlines appear throughout international law, especially in treaty regimes. Drawing on a future book chapter, in this post I describe some of the roles played by deadlines in international law. I also consider what insights research on the use of deadlines in domestic contexts might have for good and bad ways to use deadlines in international law.

Uses of Deadlines in International Law

Deadlines occur throughout international legal practice. We find them in the negotiation of treaties; in relation to the signature and ratification of treaties; in the provisions of treaties; in exchanges among nations and other actors regarding international legal obligations; and in the functioning of international organizations and tribunals.

Deadlines can have quite different international legal effects. Some deadlines are purely political, such as many deadlines in negotiations. Other deadlines set limits on access to legal opportunities, like the date a treaty closes for signature. Still other deadlines mark the legal boundary between compliance and non-compliance with obligations under international law, such as substantive or reporting deadlines written into treaties.

For examples of these different kinds of deadlines, consider the Chemical Weapons Convention. Negotiating deadlines were used during its creation. Its entry-into-force date served as the date that the Convention closed for signature, triggering several last-minute signatures. This date also served as a symbolic deadline that galvanized the advice-and-consent process in the U.S. Senate. The content of the Convention itself is also laden with deadlines. To take one prominent example, the Convention requires parties to complete destruction of their chemical weapons within ten years of the Convention’s entry into force – with the possibility of an additional extension of up to five years. The United States and Russia have overshot this deadline and are therefore in violation of their obligations. Finally, deadlines feature in the work of the international organization created by the Chemical Weapons Convention (the OPCW), as with its recent use of deadlines in relation to Syria.

As this example suggests, deadlines can prove hugely important to international law. Yet they have received little attention for legal scholars. Given how integral deadlines can be to the functioning of treaty regimes, it is important to think about they can be best deployed.

Deadlines and Behavior: Some Insights from Domestic Research

Although deadlines have received little study in international law, scholars have studied deadlines in lots of other contexts. As examples, consider the following findings:  (more…)

[Galit A. Sarfaty is the Canada Research Chair in Global Economic Governance and Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Law, University of British Columbia]

With the growing importance of global legal institutions, new forms of global law, and transnational social movements around legal issues, anthropologists are studying the multiplicity of sites where international law operates. Scholars have examined the practices of international courts and tribunals and their conceptions of justice in relation to those of local communities. They have studied the global impact of law-oriented nongovernmental organizations on postcolonial consciousness. They have also analyzed the production of international treaties by transnational elites and their localization and translation on the ground. Given the critical need to uncover how international law is produced and operates in practice, legal scholars can gain insights from anthropological literature and adopt ethnographic tools in their own analysis. As I will outline below, anthropology offers unique insights in understanding international law behavior.

What is an Anthropological Approach to International Law

Anthropological theory and methods enables the study of how international law operates in practice, from how it is produced on a global scale to its localization on the micro-level. Through ethnographic research, anthropologists analyze individual actions, systems of meaning, power dynamics, and the political and economic contexts that shape the operation of international law. They recognize disjunctures between how laws are written and how they are implemented on the ground, as well as further variations in how they affect different communities. In the context of Harold Koh’s transnational legal process theory of norm compliance, an anthropological approach sheds light on the norm emergence and internalization phases by which international norms penetrate domestic legal systems on the local level.

Ethnographic research involves case-oriented study, including long-term fieldwork and in-depth interviews. In the context of studying international law, fieldwork is frequently multi-sited to allow researchers to analyze such phenomena as the transnational circulation of global norms and local settings where multiple legal orders intersect—or what scholars call “global legal pluralism.” By tracking the flow of laws, institutions, people, and ideas across locales and jurisdictions, multi-sited “deterritorialized” ethnography is a useful tool in the study of international law.

Anthropological research aims at answering a question rather than testing a hypothesis. Unlike other methods, it is not based on prior assumptions or models. Rather, hypotheses and theories emerge from the data, and are constantly evaluated and adjusted as the research progresses. Interviews are usually unstructured or semi-structured with open-ended questions developed in response to observations and ongoing analysis. The questions are designed to seek respondents’ interpretations of what is happening and allow them to describe problems, policy solutions, and their rationales in their own words.

What Anthropologists of International Law Study

While there are numerous areas of focus for anthropologists of international law, I will very briefly highlight a few important ones here: (i) the cultures of international organizations and international tribunals; (ii) the transnational circulation and localization of international legal norms; and (iii) the knowledge practices and technologies of governance in international law.

The Cultures of International Organizations and International Tribunals

(more…)

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

This past November, the University of Georgia School of Law and the ASIL International Legal Theory Interest Group convened a book workshop on “International Law as Behavior,” at Tillar House, ASIL’s headquarters in Washington, DC. The workshop brought together scholars working in variety of different fields, including anthropology, behavioral law and economics, constructivist international relations theory, organizations theory, rational choice, social psychology, and sociology, to discuss how these approaches might best be applied to the study of international law, how these approaches can complement each other, the opportunities and challenges of working across these fields, and the development of a common language and tools to study how international actors actually behave. Participants included Anne van Aaken (University of St. Gallen), Elena Baylis (University of Pittsburgh School of Law), Tomer Broude (Hebrew University Faculty of Law), Adam Chilton (University of Chicago School of Law), Sungjoon Cho (IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law), Jean Galbraith (University of Pennsylvania Law School), Ron Levi (University of Toronto Global Affairs and Sociology), Tim Meyer (University of Georgia School of Law), Galit Sarfaty (University of British Columbia Faculty of Law), and Kathryn Sikkink (Harvard Kennedy School). A book based on presentations at the workshop that I will be editing will follow.

The workshop and book arise out of an intuition that there is more international legal scholars can learn from sophisticated work on legal behavior developing in other disciplines and more that scholars drawing on those disciplines can learn from each other. International law and legal scholars have long borrowed from a variety of disciplines to help understand the functioning of the international system. Important work on international law, including work of the New Haven and English Schools, has drawn on Law & Society, Anthropology, Constructivism, Linguistics, and Sociology. Drawing on international relations and economics, scholars have invoked principles of rational design to explain the shape of international agreements and international organizations and the choice between hard and soft law. Economic analysis has helped explain cooperation and compliance. Most recently, international law scholars have begun to draw insights from behavioral law and economics and psychology.

Instead of informing and enriching each other, however, these varied approaches have often developed in parallel and isolation, siloed off from the insights of the others. Drawing from distinct fields with their own languages and methods, scholars pursuing these approaches have often ended up talking past each other – if they spoke to each other at all. (There are obviously exceptions to these trends, including contributors to this project; readers of these posts know who you are.) The goal of this workshop and the edited volume to follow is to begin to bridge those gaps and foster the conversation between methods and approaches that might form the foundation for a study of international law as behavior. How do international actors actually behave and what drives their behavior? How and when is their rationality bounded by psychology? How do they operate as members of groups and recipients of culture? How do they write and follow organizational scripts? Dialogue between these approaches should only help to enrich all of them, suggesting new paths, blindspots, and even wrong-turns for each. Some of these methods will fit together well; others, whether because of initial assumptions or research styles and demands, may not. And, different approaches may have an advantage depending on the specific questions about international behavior being asked. But it is exactly these questions that we hope to explore.

Over the next few days, Galit Sarfaty, Jean Galbraith, Tim Meyer, Elena Baylis, Tomer Broude and I hope to give you a flavor of the presentations and conversations at the November workshop. Thank you to Opinio Juris for allowing us to showcase some of this project here. We look forward to hearing your thoughts and to kicking off Opinio Juris’ tenth year in style!

Your weekly selection of international law and international relations headlines from around the world:

Africa

• At least 80 people have been abducted and three others killed in a cross-border raid in northern Cameroon by the Nigerian armed group Boko Haram, officials have said. Nigeria’s neighbors are banding together to fight the armed group; a contingent of soldiers from Chad has arrived in northern Cameroon where it will deploy to the Nigerian border as part of efforts to contain Boko Haram fighters.
• Mali’s government and the United Nations have declared the West African nation free of Ebola following a 42-day period without a new case of the deadly virus.

Middle East and Northern Africa

• Negotiators for Iran and six global powers, striving to reach a complex deal on Tehran’s nuclear program, have had “serious and useful” discussions in Geneva and will meet again next month, the European Union has said.
• Israel said on Sunday it had cracked the first Islamic State cell on its soil, made up of seven Arab citizens who would be prosecuted on charges of planning attacks in the Jewish state and communicating with the insurgent group in Syria.
• Israel is lobbying member-states of the International Criminal Court to cut funding for the tribunal in response to its launch of an inquiry into possible war crimes in the Palestinian territories, the country’s foreign minister said on Sunday.

Asia

• A senior Afghan army general has told Al Jazeera that the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group has been active in Afghanistan.
• Tens of thousands of people staged a rally on Monday in Russia’s Chechnya region against French magazine Charlie Hebdo’s cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad, which the predominantly Muslim region’s leader denounced as “vulgar and immoral”.
• Chinese police shot dead two ethnic Uighurs trying to cross the border with Vietnam, state media said on Monday, as the public security ministry accused a separatist group of orchestrating hundreds of cases of human smuggling.
• Nigeria, Brazil and the Netherlands recalled their ambassadors in Indonesia after the Southeast Asian nation ignored their pleas for clemency and executed six prisoners for drug offences on Sunday, the first executions under President Joko Widodo. Australia could do the same.
• Five Pakistani men have been arrested in Afghanistan in connection with the Taliban massacre of 134 school children in the Pakistani city of Peshawar last month, officials from both countries said on Sunday.
• A North Korean defector whose escape from a brutal prison camp was the subject of a bestselling book has changed key parts of his story and on Sunday apologized for misleading people.

Europe

• The European Union said on Monday it would appeal against a court ruling that the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas should be removed from the bloc’s terrorist list.
• Ukrainian troops have recaptured almost all the territory of Donetsk airport in eastern Ukraine they had lost to separatists in recent weeks and thousands gathered in Kiev for a state-sponsored peace march.
• British Prime Minister David Cameron said there was “a right to cause offense about someone’s religion” in a free society, drawing a distinction between himself and Pope Francis in their response to the deadly Islamist attacks in Paris.

Americas

• A delegation of US congressional Democrats began a three-day visit to Cuba to discuss expectations for the normalisation of relations between the United States and the island nation.

UN/World

• U.N. peacekeepers in Central African Republic have arrested a senior leader of the anti-balaka militia, wanted for crimes including murder, rebellion, rape and looting, the country’s senior prosecutor said on Sunday.