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NYU JILP Symposium: Globalizing Transitional Justice

[Ruti Teitel is the Ernst C. Stiefel Professor of Comparative Law at New York Law School and the author of Globalizing Transitional Justice (2015).] This post is part of the NYU Journal of International Law and Politics, Vol. 47, No. 4, symposium. Other posts in this series can be found in the related posts below. I am pleased to join this symposium...

NYU JILP Symposium: Collective Memory Focus on the Local, and on Reform

[Naomi Roht-Arriaza is Distinguished Professor of Law, University of California, Hastings College of Law.] This post is part of the NYU Journal of International Law and Politics, Vol. 47, No. 4, symposium. Other posts in this series can be found in the related posts below. Rachel Lopez’ article breaks new ground in a few ways. We’ve known of the importance and process...

NYU JILP Symposium: The Memories of Collectives, the Gadgetry of Victimhood

[Mark A. Drumbl is the Class of 1975 Alumni Professor of Law and Director, Transnational Law Institute, Washington & Lee University, and Visiting Scholar, CICJ, VU University Amsterdam.] This post is part of the NYU Journal of International Law and Politics, Vol. 47, No. 4, symposium. Other posts in this series can be found in the related posts below. Atrocity begins with story-telling. Elegies lament unrighted wrongs from ancient battles. Fables weave and spin the bravado of national or ethnic superiority. The roll, pitch, and yaw of an entire literature ritualizes dehumanization: stories of vermin, poisonous mushrooms in children’s books, bespectacled intellectuals, enemies of the state. Then come exhortations to cut the tall trees, to take out the garbage, and to make way for Lebensraum. The filth is to be scrubbed, the society purified, the landscape cleansed. Atrocity metastasizes once these stories become performed. New stories then emerge. These stories narrate pain and suffering. Their tales, however, may redound with redemption; their ballads may record harrowing strategies of survival paired with forensic accounts of death; at times, too, chants of resistance arise. In the aftermath of atrocity, these stories become memory. The construction of memory, then, becomes an act of the living and a sign of life. For survivors, authorship over memory represents the exercise of agency and autonomy. For perpetrators and their supporters, revising (or denying) memory – also an act of authorship – becomes a tactic to thrive in changing times. It is no surprise that in the aftermath of mass atrocity the recovery of memory, and its reclamation, matters so much to so many. The hunger for memory, however, intersects with the blandness of law. This encounter frustrates, perhaps most acutely for victims. It is here that Professor Lopez enters the conversation. She recognizes this frustration. She also gestures towards a path forward. For her, law can respect memory. It can channel stories of survival, subjugation, and suffering. While Professor Lopez is an optimist about law’s potential, she remains more circumspect about how, exactly, we should understand memory. In a particularly thoughtful argument, she contends that conversations ought to move towards “collective memory.” For Professor Lopez, collective memory arises when those most affected by mass atrocity “though discussion and ritual … merge their fragmented recollections into one holistic narrative.” Collective memory is unscripted. It emerges organically through a synthesis of informal conversations, shared glances, tacit rejections, and knowing nods. Drawing from a rich array of sources, Professor Lopez posits that collective memory is more accurate, consistent, and concise than individual memory. In sum, then, Professor Lopez effectively exposes law’s predilection for individual conduct and illustrates how this penchant inhibits law’s ability to inflect collective action. For her, this is a loss. It is a loss because victims yearn for more. Professor Lopez’s response is reformist. Human rights lawyers should preserve and promote collective memory. Integrating collective memory of victims into legal process, for Professor Lopez, would clarify how atrocity begins and could document the pain it inflicts, while also furthering aspirations of reconciliation, transition, the development of an historical record, nation-building, and legal reform. How to accommodate collective memory into legal proceedings? Professor Lopez’s recognizes that the criminal law may find such accommodations awkward, if not downright unworkable. The criminal law, after all, is primarily about adjudging the guilt or innocence of the defendant. The need to focus on the defendant requires the foregrounding of all sorts of due process rules. This need stymies the use of collective memory in penal process because collective memory cannot be properly vetted. Professor Lopez therefore directs our gaze elsewhere. She points to tort-based claims, action civile, and the victims’ participation scheme built by the Rome Statute and present at the ECCC. Professor Lopez’s article makes a tremendously valuable contribution to the literature on transitional justice. Her diagnosis of law’s foibles, and her proclamation of the potential of collective memory, is sterling. She has the courage to offer some remedial responses. Her article is a rich base for a symposium. For me, her piece opens two shutters. The first is architectural. The second is discursive.

Guest Post: Is the Execution of Collaborators a War Crime under the Rome Statute? (Part II)

[Shane Darcy is a lecturer at the Irish Centre for Human Rights, National University of Ireland Galway and the author of Judges, Law and War; the Judicial Development of International Humanitarian Law (Cambridge, 2014). This is the second part of a two-part series. The first post can be found here.] Following on from the first part of this essay, which introduced...

Guest Post: Is the Execution of Collaborators a War Crime under the Rome Statute? (Part I)

[Shane Darcy is a lecturer at the Irish Centre for Human Rights, National University of Ireland Galway and the author of Judges, Law and War; the Judicial Development of International Humanitarian Law (Cambridge, 2014). This is Part 1 of a two-part series.] The recruitment and use of Palestinian collaborators by the Israeli authorities, and their ill-treatment and execution by Palestinian forces,...

Guest Post: Norm Diffusion in the Transpacific Partnership

[Ardevan Yaghoubi is a Ph.D Student at Princeton University's Department of Politics.] 

"As we speak, China wants to write the rules for the world’s fastest-growing region. That would put our workers and our businesses at a disadvantage. Why would we let that happen? We should write those rules."  - President Obama, State of the Union Address, January 20, 2015

Proponents of the recently-concluded Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) typically argue that the agreement will do one of two things: increase economic growth through exports and jobs, or advance favorable geopolitical and national security objectives. The economic perspective on the agreement sees a rational-choice model of expected economic utility; the geopolitical frame emphasizes the TPP’s role in creating reputation, prestige, and soft power. But the strictly material and abstractly ideational explanations of the TPP both miss an important feature of the agreement: that the TPP is designed to create norms that spread across the international system. It is not only intended to bring about economic benefits or directly buttress American allies in Asia to counter a rising power. In the study of international politics, this process is called norm diffusion. I argue that understanding norm diffusion helps to articulate the implicit theory behind President Obama’s metaphor of “writing the rules”. By melding insights about norm diffusion to the frame of a traditional trade agreement, the TPP is a unique and noteworthy innovation in international law and institutionalism. Whatever one’s thoughts about the merits of the TPP, the basic hypothesis undergirding its intended effects deserves greater clarity. In this post, I explore the logic of norm diffusion in the TPP: Is norm diffusion an objective of the TPP? If so, how exactly is the process of diffusion expected to occur? And what obstacles might block the reproduction of the TPP’s rules? I will address these questions in turn. Is the TPP Really About Norm Diffusion? Alongside their traditional role of merely cutting tariffs and lowering trade barriers, today’s FTAs are a tool of international economic competition: the rules contained in these agreements regulate and shape industries from agriculture to manufacturing to finance. It is hardly controversial, then, that FTAs will tend to reflect the economies and economic priorities of the states who have negotiated them. States don’t have total latitude in determining the content of FTAs, since WTO rules still exert substantial influence. But there are many parts of the world economy where the WTO’s influence is limited. What norms are these? Well, the TPP text agreed on in Atlanta contains chapters regulating norms spanning the right to organize, the illegal trade of wildlife and environmentally protected species, generic medicines, copyright infringement, 3D printing and manufacturing, financial investments, state-owned enterprises and government procurement, and of course, tariffs and non-tariff barriers to trade. But the TPP came into being at the end of a two-decade period in which American influence in the global trade system has been waning. While the number of new agreements negotiated has increased dramatically since the millennium, the U.S. has signed just a handful of notable new FTAs: with Korea (2012), Dominican Republic-Central America or DR-CAFTA (2005), Singapore (2004), Chile (2004), and Australia (2004). Taking stock of the total number of agreements by region, the U.S. lags behind the Asia Pacific, South America, Eurasia, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. Seen against this economic and geopolitical backdrop, the necessity of the TPP from an American policy perspective should be evident: it represents approximately 40% of global GDP across North and South America and the Asia Pacific, and nearly one-third of global trade. Without it, the U.S. loses leverage and potential economic opportunities in a century where its percentage share of the global economic pie will continue to shrink. It also brings post-war allies, like the U.S. and Japan, closer together as a key element of the “pivot to Asia”, while integrating non-allied states like Vietnam and Malaysia. Many geopolitical analyses of the TPP end with vague references to “soft power” or U.S. national security interests and little explanation of how the TPP will actually further those aims. What these narratives miss is that the logic of the agreement is based on a theory of norm diffusion. In its essence, norm diffusion (or sometimes called norm “cascade”) refers to “an active process of international socialization intended to induce norm breakers to become norm followers”. International relations scholars have given careful attention to the way in which norms and rules circulate and achieve legitimate compliance in international politics and international law. But what is striking about the TPP is that its architects are themselves conscious of these socialization effects. For instance, here is a representative statement by USTR Ambassador Michael Froman writing in Foreign Affairs: