Democracies and International Law by Tom Ginsburg

Abstract

Six days after Russia invaded Ukraine, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution demanding an end to the invasion and an immediate withdrawal of troops. The situation seemed unambiguous: a clear-cut violation of Ukrainian sovereignty, one of the bedrock principles of the UN Charter. Yet, the vote was not unanimous or even near unanimous. While overwhelmingly approved, with 141 states in favor and five against, a surprising thirty-five states abstained. All but three of the states that abstained or voted against the resolution are authoritarian or authoritarian-leaning. Such a clustering of authoritarian states—many of which are postcolonial and have recent histories of conflict—against a public condemnation of aggression begs the question of the relationship between domestic regime type and international law. This question is at the heart of Tom Ginsburg’s Democracies and International Law, a tour de force of the observed patterns of democracies utilizing international law. From this empirical analysis, the book makes insightful and informed predictions about the future of international law under democratic decline, including the potential of using international law to shore up democracy and the characteristics of “authoritarian international law.”