Responding to criticism: Autocratic states and treaty reservation withdrawal

Reviewed by: Mobilizing for Human Rights: International Law in Domestic Politics David Cingranelli (bio) Beth Simmons, Mobilizing for Human Rights: International Law in Domestic Politics (Cambridge Univ. Press 2009) 451 pages, ISBN 9780521885102. This is one of the most important books in decades on the effectiveness of international law in affecting human rights practices. It is an outstanding example of testing theory using a combination of qualitative and quantitative analyses. For students and scholars who want to understand how and when international human rights law works this book is a must-read. Simmons argues that international human rights law has made a positive contribution to the realization of human rights in much of the world. In support of this argument, she shows that governments that ratify human rights treaties improve their treaty-relevant human rights practices more than governments that do not. Although governments sometimes ratify human rights treaties insincerely, gambling that they will experience little pressure to comply with them, Simmons contends that this is not typically the case. Focusing on rights stakeholders within ratifying countries rather than external pressure from the United Nations or other states, she demonstrates that the ratification of treaties leads to better rights practices on average. By several measures, civil and political rights, women’s rights, a right not to be tortured in government detention, and children’s rights improve, especially in the very large heterogeneous set of countries that are neither stable autocracies nor stable democracies. Simmons argues that the international community should give more practical and rhetorical support to international human rights law as a supplement to broader efforts to address conflict, development, and democratization. She devotes about 40 percent of the book to developing theoretical arguments about why governments commit themselves to be bound by international law and then subjecting those arguments to empirical tests. The author uses most of the rest of the book to develop arguments about why states comply with their treaty commitments and subjecting those arguments to empirical tests. Her main argument about compliance is that treaties alter politics and human rights practices in certain settings by providing opportunities for social mobilization. There are four findings chapters—each focused on estimating the effects of joining a different human rights treaty. The last chapter is a well written summary of her findings, how they relate to her theories of commitment and compliance, and the implications of her findings for policy and practice. The two appendices to the book will be especially useful to those who wish to replicate her study or conduct similar studies. Appendix one provides a detailed account of the measures used in the quantitative analyses. Appendix two shows the countries included in her study broken down by the degree of the rule of law and by regime type—two of the most important characteristics explaining treaty commitment and compliance. [End Page 761] Simmons acknowledges that her arguments about the effectiveness of human rights treaty commitments run counter to most previous research. She notes that most previous relevant research in the fields of international law and human rights has relied on evidence from intensive case studies about treaty participation effects in individual countries. Her research, in contrast, looks for evidence of relationships between commitments to human rights treaties and human rights performance over a broad span of time and space. The data shows patterns that were not easily demonstrated in the previous quantitative or case study work conducted by other scholars. Simmons complements her quantitative evidence with detailed discussions of how treaties have influenced politics and practices in particular countries. The qualitative work in the book is useful in exploring the causal mechanisms by which government commitments to treaties are translated into subsequent better human rights practices. Her argument is that commitments to human rights treaties do not affect human rights practices by all the governments that make such commitments. They matter most where they have “domestic political and legal traction.”1 Her book is focused on identifying the conditions under which such traction is possible. Thus, even her quantitative research is more nuanced than most previous quantitative studies on this topic, which have generally reached more pessimistic conclusions about the effectiveness of international human rights...

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes Research for this article was supported by the John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC, which granted me a residential fellowship from September 2002 to May 2003. I would like to thank Grigorii V. Golosov for his valuable comments on the earlier drafts of the manuscript. I am also grateful to the anonymous reviewers whose comments allowed me to substantially improve the article. Those errors of fact and interpretation that remain, as well as the views expressed, are entirely mine. Michael Laver makes a distinction between government duration and government durability. The former is an essentially empirical concept, while the latter is essentially theoretical. See Michael Laver, 'Government Termination', Annual Review of Political Science, 6, 1, June 2003, pp. 23 – 40. Investiture is the formal procedure of the parliament's approval of a new government. Kaare Strom, Eric C. Browne, John P. Frendreis & Dennis W. Glieber, 'Contending Models of Cabinet Stability', American Political Science Review, 82, 3, September 1988, pp. 923 – 941. Arend Lijphart, Democracies: Patterns of Majoritarian and Consensus Government in Twenty-One Countries (New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 1984), pp. 78 – 85; Paul Warwick, Government Survival in Parliamentary Democracies (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1994); see also Alan Siaroff, 'Varieties of Parliamentarianism in the Advanced Industrial Democracies', International Political Science Review, 24, 4, October 2003, pp. 445 – 464. Daniel Diermeier & Peter Van Roozendaal, 'The Duration of Cabinet Formation Processes in Western Multi-Party Democracies', British Journal of Political Science, 28, 4, October 1998, pp. 609 – 626. Jean Blondel, Government Ministers in the Contemporary World (London and Beverly Hills, Sage, 1985), especially pp. 130, 136 – 137. Lawrence C. Dodd, 'The Study of Cabinet Durability: Introduction and Commentary', Comparative Political Studies, 17, 2, July 1984, pp. 155 – 161. Eric C. Browne, John P. Frendreis & Dennis W. Gleiber, 'An "Events" Approach to the Problem of Cabinet Stability', Comparative Political Studies, 17, 2, July 1984, pp. 167 – 197. Paul Warwick & Stephen T. Easton, 'The Cabinet Stability Controversy: New Perspectives on a Classic Problem', American Journal of Political Science, 36, 1, February 1992, pp. 122 – 146; Daniel Diermeier & Antonio Merlo, 'Government Turnover in Parliamentary Democracies', Journal of Economic Theory, 94, 1, September 2000, pp. 46 – 79. For a detailed literature overview see Laver, 'Government Termination'. Kaare Strom, Minority Government and Majority Rule (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1990). Gregory M. Luebbert, 'Coalition Theory and Government Formation in Multiparty Democracies', Comparative Politics, 15, 3, April 1983, pp. 235 – 249. William Bernhard & David Leblang, 'Political Parties and Monetary Commitments', International Organization, 56, 4, Fall 2002, pp. 803 – 830. Scott Mainwaring & Matthew Soberg Shugart, 'Juan Linz, Presidentialism, and Democracy: A Critical Appraisal', The Helen Kellogg Institute for International Studies, University of Notre Dame, Working Paper No. 200, July 1993. Blondel, Government Ministers in the Contemporary World, pp. 122 – 125. Nelson W. Polsby, 'The Institutionalization of the U.S. House of Representatives', American Political Science Review, 62, 1, March 1968, pp. 144 – 168 at pp. 145 – 146. Peverill Squire, 'Membership Turnover and the Efficient Processing of Legislation', Legislative Studies Quarterly, 23, 1, February 1998, pp. 23 – 32. Morris P. Fiorina, Congress, Keystone of the Washington Establishment (New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, 1977). John M. Carey, Frantisek Formanek & Ewa Karpowicz, 'Legislative Autonomy in New Regimes: The Czech and Polish Cases', Legislative Studies Quarterly, 24, 4, November 1999, pp. 569 – 603; Scott Morgenstern & Benito Nacif (eds), Legislative Politics in Latin America (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 415 – 417. Lyn Ragsdale & John J. Theis, 'The Institutionalization of the American Presidency, 1924 – 92', American Journal of Political Science, 41, 4, October 1997, pp. 1280 – 1318 at pp. 1290, 1303. Blondel, Government Ministers in the Contemporary World, pp. 135 – 136. Michael Curtis (gen. ed.), Introduction to Comparative Government (New York, Harper and Row, 1985), pp. 35 – 114 at pp. 82 – 83. R. A. W. Rhodes & Patrick Dunleavy (eds), Prime Minister, Cabinet and Core Executive (Basingstoke, St. Martin's Press, 1995), pp. 11 – 12. Jan-Erik Lane, David McKay & Kenneth Newton (eds), Political Data Handbook OECD Countries (Oxford and New York, Oxford University Press, 1991). Heikki Paloheimo, Governments in Democratic Capitalist States 1950 – 1983. A Data Handbook (University of Turku, Department of Sociology and Political Science, Studies on Political Science No. 8, 1984). Jaap Woldendorp, Hans Keman & Ian Budge, 'Introduction', European Journal of Political Research, 24, 1, August 1993, pp. 1 – 13. Blondel, Government Ministers in the Contemporary World, p. 82. This method is often used in comparative studies of ministerial duration. See Blondel, Government Ministers in the Contemporary World, pp. 79 – 81. www.systema.ru/ and law.optima.ru/; db.informika.ru:8082/home.htm; www.vcom.ru/law/rf_law_2.shtml; businesspravo.ru/. www.integrum.ru/; www.eastview.com/; www.public.ru/. www.nns.ru/; www.panorama.ru/; www.cityline.ru/politika/; allrus.info; www.rfefl.org and www.friends-partners.org. Laver, 'Government Termination', p. 25. Arend Lijphart, 'Measures of Cabinet Durability: A Conceptual and Empirical Evaluation', Comparative Political Studies, 17, 2, July 1984, pp. 265 – 279; Eric C. Browne, John P. Frendreis & Dennis W. Gleiber, 'The Process of Cabinet Dissolution: An Exponential Model of Duration and Stability in Western Democracies', American Journal of Political Science, 30, 3, August 1986, pp. 628 – 650; Warwick, Government Survival in Parliamentary Democracies. Lijphart, 'Measures of Cabinet Durability'; Carol Mershon, 'The Costs of Coalition: Coalition Theories and Italian Governments', American Political Science Review, 90, 3, September 1996, pp. 534 – 554. Richard Sakwa, Russian Politics and Society (London and New York, Routledge, 1993), p. 79. The cabinet of Mikhail Fradkov is the eleventh cabinet. The official title of the head of the Russian government was and has been the 'Chairman of the Government'. 'Prime minister' is an unofficial title of the chief executive. Jean Blondel & Ferdinand Müller-Rommel (eds), Cabinets in Eastern Europe (Basingstoke, Palgrave, 2001), p. 196. Current Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov is included. Michael Laver & Kenneth A. Shepsle, Making and Breaking Governments (New York, Cambridge University Press, 1996). For a detailed exploration of this argument in a comparative perspective see Blondel, Government Ministers in the Contemporary World, chapter 6. According to the 1993 Constitution, the president appoints and dismisses the cabinet, which is named the 'highest organ of executive power' in Russia. Komsomol'skaya pravda, 13 April 1999. Neil Robinson, 'The Presidency: The Politics of Institutional Chaos', in Neil Robinson (ed.), Institutions and Political Change in Russia (London, Macmillan, 2000), pp. 11 – 40. Blondel, Government Ministers in the Contemporary World, chapter 5. Josephine T. Andrews, When Majorities Fail: The Russian Parliament, 1990 – 1993 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 113 – 123. John P. Willerton, 'Yeltsin and the Russian Presidency', in Stephen White, Alex Pravda & Zvi Gitelman (eds), Developments in Russian and Post-Soviet Politics, 3rd edn. (Durham, Duke University Press, 1994), pp. 25 – 56 at pp. 33 – 39; Thomas F. Remington, The Russian Parliament: Institutional Evolution in a Transitional Regime, 1989 – 1999 (New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 2001), pp. 93 – 98. In October 1991 President El'tsin requested authority to form a government without approval by the parliament. The parliament agreed to give El'tsin powers he requested for a period of one year. The Duma votes on confirmation of the prime minister and on motions of no confidence in the cabinet. If the Duma rejects the president's nominee for the prime minister position three times in a row, the president dissolves the parliament. Terry M. Moe, 'The New Economics of Organization', American Journal of Political Science, 28, 4, November 1984, pp. 739 – 777. Mathew D. McCubbins, 'A Theory of Political Control and Agency Discretion', American Journal of Political Science, 33, 3, August 1989, pp. 588 – 611. Peter Aranson, Ernst Gellhorn & Glen Robinson, 'A Theory of Legislative Delegation', Cornell Law Review, 68, 1, November 1982, pp. 1 – 67; Morris P. Fiorina, 'Group Concentration and the Delegation of Legislative Authority', in Roger G. Noll (ed.), Regulatory Policy and the Social Sciences (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1985), pp. 175 – 196; David Epstein & Sharyn O'Halloran, Delegating Powers: A Transaction Cost Politics Approach to Policy Making Under Separate Powers (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 75 and 85. Iulia Shevchenko, 'Who Cares about Women's Problems? Female Legislators in the 1995 and 1999 Russian State Dumas', Europe-Asia Studies, 54, 8, December 2002, pp. 1201 – 1222. Iulia Shevchenko, The Central Government of Russia: From Gorbachev to Putin (Aldershot, Ashgate, 2004). Such circumstances accounted for the removal of the government of Mikhail Kas'yanov. See Aleksandr Osobtsov, 'Yazyki za kremlevskimi zubtsami', Rossiiskie vesti, 24 – 30 March 2004. President El'tsin as prime minister in 1991 – 92 is excluded. The figure also excludes chairmen of the council of ministers of the autonomous republics located on Russian territory who up to the end of 1993 were central government members ex officio. The current government of Mikhail Fradkov does not include women. Both total and interrupted averages are slightly lowered because the tenure of those seven ministers who continue in office in the Fradkov government is limited to February 2004. Blondel, Government Ministers in the Contemporary World, pp. 86 – 92. Blondel & Müller-Rommel, Cabinets in Eastern Europe, p. 197. According to the 1992 Law on the Government, four so-called power ministers (foreign affairs, defence, security and internal affairs) were to be appointed with the Supreme Soviet's consent. This norm, however, was repealed as soon as the parliament was disbanded. If a dismissed minister is offered another ministry, different from the one he/she previously headed, such a reshuffle is counted as well. Resignations of ministers who then join a new cabinet to continue to head the same ministries are disregarded. Reappointments of ministers who preserved their positions in a new cabinet are disregarded. Gordon M. Hahn, 'From Chernomyrdin to Kirienko', Problems of Post-Communism, 45, 5, September – October 1998, pp. 3 – 16. John D. Huber & Cecilia Martinez-Gallardo, 'Cabinet Instability and the Accumulation of Experience: The French Fourth and Fifth Republics in Comparative Perspective', British Journal of Political Science, 34, 1, January 2004, pp. 27 – 48. Iulia Shevchenko, 'Explaining Electoral Results: 1993 – 1996', in Vladimir Gel'man & Grigorii V. Golosov (eds), Elections in Russia, 1993 – 1996: Analyses, Documents, and Data (Berlin, Edition Sigma, 1999), pp. 200 – 225. Edwin Bacon, 'The Power Ministries', in Neil Robinson (ed.), Institutions and Political Change in Russia (London, Macmillan, 2000), pp. 130 – 150. Nodari Simonia, 'Economic Interests and Political Power in Post-Soviet Russia', in Archie Brown (ed.), Contemporary Russian Politics (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 269 – 285 at pp. 274 – 275. Bacon, 'The Power Ministries'. Eugene Huskey, 'Overcoming the Yeltsin Legacy: Vladimir Putin and Russian Political Reform', in Archie Brown (ed.), Contemporary Russian Politics (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 82 – 96. Up to the establishment of the presidency, the executive branch was altered by the parliament. In 1991 – 93 both president and parliament took part in government reorganisation. Since 1993 the executive branch has been altered by the president. Once appointed, the prime minister submits proposals to the president on the structure of the executive. The notion of 'reorganisation' includes abolition, alteration or a fall in the institutional status which leads to exclusion from the cabinet. See also Blondel, Government Ministers in the Contemporary World, pp. 171 – 172. Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliev is excluded. There was a short break in Shoigu's ministerial career because from November 1991 to May 1992 his agency was attached to the presidential office rather than being an independent unit of the government. See also Jean Blondel, The Organization of Governments: A Comparative Analysis of Governmental Structures (London and Beverly Hills, Sage, 1982), pp. 146 – 148. The Presidium of the government was abolished in 2000. Eugene Huskey, Presidential Power in Russia (Armonk, NY, M. E. Sharpe, 1999), p. 109. See also Michael McFaul, 'Why Russia's Politics Matter', Foreign Affairs, 74, 1, January – February 1995, pp. 87 – 99. In the last decade of Soviet rule the Soviet government had 11 regular deputies and two first deputies. Article 8 of the law. The appointment of Fradkov as prime minister was not entirely in line with a political tradition because Fradkov was not a cabinet member. However, his post of Russia's envoy to the European Union was assigned ministerial rank. In Fradkov's cabinet Khristenko was appointed minister of industry and energy. In the spring of 2003 Matvienko became presidential envoy to the Northwest federal district and then won the early gubernatorial election in St Petersburg. The numbers of deputy premiers differ from the numbers given at the beginning of the section because some officials were promoted to a deputy premiership more than once. In January 1996 President El'tsin dismissed the agriculture minister and appointed deputy prime minister Aleksandr Zaveryukha acting head in his place. Zaveryukha performed the duties of agriculture minister until May 1996. Shevchenko, The Central Government of Russia. Warwick, Government Survival in Parliamentary Democracies, p. 4. Iulia Shevchenko & Grigorii V. Golosov, 'Legislative Activism of Russian Duma Deputies, 1996 – 1999', Europe-Asia Studies, 53, 2, March 2001, pp. 239 – 261. Carey et al., 'Legislative Autonomy in New Regimes'; Morgenstern & Nacif, Legislative Politics in Latin America, pp. 415 – 419. Ezhenedel'nyi zhurnal, 15 March 2004; Vremya novostei, 10 March 2004.

Since the end of the Cold War, the international community has engaged in two tasks that run contrary to traditional notions of state sovereignty. first is the reconstruction of domestic political institutions in states emerging from civil second is the promotion of liberal democracy as the preferred form of national governance. Whether one understands state sovereignty in territorial or functional terms, both tasks break new ground. At the heart of most Westphalian conceptions of state autonomy is the capacity for self-government. International law prior to the end of the Cold War was highly protective of how states selected their leaders and designed their constitutional systems. As a respected international law treatise stated in 1905, The Law of Nations prescribes no rules as regards the kind of head a State may have. Every State is, naturally, independent regarding this point, possessing the faculty of adopting any Constitution according to its discretion. (1) It is commonplace that state sovereignty has never been absolute, either in theory or practice; however, for the international community to involve itself in matters of internal governance--let alone to specify a model of liberal democracy as the normative ideal--intrudes upon functions that even the most permeable conceptions of sovereignty have regarded as wholly domestic. These assumptions have now changed. External actors, led primarily by the United Nations, have become negotiators of peace agreements to end civil wars; drafters of new constitutions, electoral laws, and judicial procedures; and supervisors of all aspects of postwar transitions. These postconflict reconstruction or peacebuilding missions (the terms are used interchangeably) have taken place on every continent. They have become so common that, at the end of the twentieth century, it was the rare civil conflict that ended without the UN being assigned an important role in the state's reconstruction. (2) A UN panel has defined peacebuilding as activities undertaken on the far side of conflict to reassemble the foundations of peace and provide the tools for building on those foundations something that is more than just the absence of war. (3) Between 1991 and 2002, seventeen UN peacebuilding missions were deployed. (4) During the same period, international law has increasingly identified liberal democracy as the preferred form of national governance. (5) Scholars have identified an emerging entitlement in international law--the view that representative government, chosen in fair and periodic elections, is a human right of all citizens. (6) state practice underpinning this emerging norm is widespread and diverse: resolutions of the Security Council urging free and fair elections; clarification of the treaty-based right to political participation by international human rights bodies; refusal of states and international organizations to recognize regimes taking power by extraconstitutional means; the conditioning of foreign aid on comportment with norms; and the conditioning of treaty relations on the maintenance of democratic institutions. These and other similar acts are the raw data from which norms of customary international law emerge. Postconflict reconstruction initiatives bring together these two normative strains of reconstructing state institutions after conflict and democracy promotion. When the UN has contributed to the political and legal structure of postconflict societies, it has invariably drawn on the body of emerging democratic norms. While this cross-pollination is not often explicit, the institutions and procedures it has recommended for postconflict states find direct parallels in the body of human rights norms concerning political participation. On issues ranging from universal suffrage to party pluralism to media access for opposition groups, international norms and the practice of democracy promotion missions are remarkably congruent. …

Martii Koskenniemi argues that human rights law is indeterminate, and that arguments based on human rights unavoidably reflect the policy preferences of the speaker. I connect this argument to empirical evidence of the failure of international human rights treaties to improve human rights in countries that have ratified them. I argue that many features of the human rights regime that are celebrated by lawyers—the large number of treaties, the vast number of rights, the large amount of institutionalization, and the involvement of NGOs—actually reflect the failure of the regime. Governments tolerate these developments because they add to the indeterminacy of the legal regime, freeing them to act in the public interest when they are motivated to do so. International law is a vast field governing countless relationships between states, yet a very small part of it receives most of the attention—human rights. This may seem puzzling. The treaties that created the human rights regime are no different from the treaties that created the law of the sea and international trade law. Yet clearly people think about human rights law differently from the rest of international law. Lawyers who discuss the law of the sea or international trade law are likely, sooner or later, to ask whether the rules in those areas are consistent with human rights norms, while human rights lawyers can discuss human rights law without thinking about the law of the sea or the WTO. Many people insist that states are bound to respect human rights even if they have not ratified the relevant treaties, or have ratified them subject to reservations—while countries that do not belong to the WTO are not bound by its rules. Some people believe that human rights law binds states even when states explicitly repudiate it; human rights law is said to have a “constitutional” dimension. An enormous infrastructure has grown up around human rights. Countless NGOs monitor compliance with human rights in various countries. Governments routinely criticize each other for violating human rights. An endless array of commissions, councils, committees, courts, and offices attempt to administer the human rights treaties. While other treaty regimes also are governed by international organizations (the WTO, the Law of the Sea Authority), no other area of law has thrown up quite so many institutions, with complex, overlapping jurisdictions. It is also hard to think of another area of international law where there is so much activity: so many proposals for additional treaties, for expanding the scope of existing treaties, for strengthening and constructing new institutions. And yet the accomplishments of international human rights law seem rather slim. Countries rarely try to enforce the treaties against each other—at least, in a systematic way. They do not “retaliate” against each other for violating the treaties the way they often retaliate against countries that violate trade law. Countries do threaten human-rights violators with sanctions from 1 Kirkland & Ellis Distinguished Service Professor, University of Chicago Law School. Thanks to Adam Chilton for

‘Transitology’ and ‘consolidology’ have only rarely emphasized the importance of defining democracy in a normatively and theoretically sophisticated manner. Almost without discussion they accepted the parsimonious definition and elegant but simple concepts of Schumpeter, Dahl and Przeworski. 1 They reduced democracy to the question of free and general electoral competition, vertical accountability and the fact that the most powerful political and social actors played the political game according to democratically institutionalized rules. At least implicitly, democracy was conceived as an elitist electoral democracy. Neither the structural question of prerequisites for democracy 2 nor the conditions for sustainable legitimacy 3 played and could play a relevant role within this minimalist concept of the sustainability of democracy. But not only the external ‘embedding’ of democracy, but also the ‘internal’ embeddedness of the democratic electoral regime was neglected. Rule of law, civil rights and horizontal accountability were excluded from the concept of democracy. Guillermo O’Donnell (1993) 4 was the first to criticize that conceptual flaw of the mainstream of transitology and consolidology. Thirty years after the beginning of the third wave of democratization empirical evidence revealed the theoretical shortcomings of the minimalist ‘electoralists’. It became evident that it is misleading to subsume Denmark, Sweden or France under the same type of regime – an electoral democracy – as Russia, Thailand or Brazil. Political science ran the risk of even falling behind the analytical capacity of daily newspapers in differentiating between different types of democracy. It became clear that the majority of new democracies could not be labelled ‘liberal democracies’. General, competitive and free elections turned out to be insufficient in guaranteeing the rule of law, civil rights and horizontal accountability. Between elections many of the electoral democracies were not government by, of or for the people. It became obvious, again, that democratic elections need the support of complementary partial regimes, such as the rule of law, horizontal accountability and an open public sphere in order to become ‘meaningful’ elections. Democratic theory has once again met up with research on democratization. Since the mid-1990s studies

The United States is almost alone among nations in permitting the execution of juvenile offenders. Citing this fact, along with a variety of legal materials, litigants and scholars are increasingly claiming that the United States' use of the juvenile death penalty violates international law. This Article examines the validity of this claim, from the perspective of both the international legal system and the U.S. legal system. Based on a detailed examination of the United States' interaction with treaty regimes and international institutions since the late 1940s, the Article concludes that the international law arguments against the juvenile death penalty have significant weaknesses. As the Article documents, for a number of reasons the United States has consistently declined to consent to treaty provisions restricting the juvenile death penalty, and it has consistently declared the human rights treaties that contain such restrictions to be non-self-executing. In addition, since at least the mid-1980s, the United States has persistently objected to - and thereby legally opted out of - any customary international law restriction on the juvenile death penalty. The Article also argues that, even if these international law arguments were more persuasive, they would not provide a basis for relief in U.S. courts. For separation of powers reasons, courts properly will decline to apply international law to override the considered choices of the President and Senate in their ratification of treaties. In addition, because of concerns relating to both separation of powers and federalism, courts properly will decline to apply customary international law to override state criminal punishment, especially when (as is the case here) the political branches have expressly declined to do so by treaty. This potential gap between evolving international law norms and U.S. judicial enforcement is less disturbing than some commentators appear to assume - it simply means that the juvenile death penalty issue, like other difficult issues of social policy in the United States, must be resolved through U.S. democratic and constitutional processes. Although important on its own terms, the juvenile death penalty issue may also have broader implications for the relationship between U.S. law and international human rights law. Litigants and scholars have met with at least modest success in attempting to have international human rights law incorporated into the U.S. legal system. This success, however, has primarily come in the context of civil lawsuits seeking damages for human rights abuses committed in foreign countries. Increasingly, litigants and scholars are seeking to build on this success and persuade U.S. courts to apply international human rights law internally as a basis for overriding domestic laws and practices. The juvenile death penalty has become a central focus of this effort, and the way in which the international law challenges are resolved in this context may have a significant impact on the viability of other attempts to domesticate international human rights law.

The United States is almost alone among nations in permitting the execution of juvenile offenders. Citing this fact, along with a variety of legal materials, litigants and scholars are increasingly claiming that the United States' use of the juvenile death penalty violates international law. This Article examines the validity of this claim, from the perspective of both the international legal system and the U.S. legal system. Based on a detailed examination of the United States' interaction with treaty regimes and international institutions since the late 1940s, the Article concludes that the international law arguments against the juvenile death penalty have significant weaknesses. As the Article documents, for a number of reasons the United States has consistently declined to consent to treaty provisions restricting the juvenile death penalty, and it has consistently declared the human rights treaties that contain such restrictions to be non-self-executing. In addition, since at least the mid-1980s, the United States has persistently objected to - and thereby legally opted out of - any customary international law restriction on the juvenile death penalty. The Article also argues that, even if these international law arguments were more persuasive, they would not provide a basis for relief in U.S. courts. For separation of powers reasons, courts properly will decline to apply international law to override the considered choices of the President and Senate in their ratification of treaties. In addition, because of concerns relating to both separation of powers and federalism, courts properly will decline to apply customary international law to override state criminal punishment, especially when (as is the case here) the political branches have expressly declined to do so by treaty. This potential gap between evolving international law norms and U.S. judicial enforcement is less disturbing than some commentators appear to assume - it simply means that the juvenile death penalty issue, like other difficult issues of social policy in the United States, must be resolved through U.S. democratic and constitutional processes. Although important on its own terms, the juvenile death penalty issue may also have broader implications for the relationship between U.S. law and international human rights law. Litigants and scholars have met with at least modest success in attempting to have international human rights law incorporated into the U.S. legal system. This success, however, has primarily come in the context of civil lawsuits seeking damages for human rights abuses committed in foreign countries. Increasingly, litigants and scholars are seeking to build on this success and persuade U.S. courts to apply international human rights law internally as a basis for overriding domestic laws and practices. The juvenile death penalty has become a central focus of this effort, and the way in which the international law challenges are resolved in this context may have a significant impact on the viability of other attempts to domesticate international human rights law.

At meantime the era of human rights succeeding the end of World War Ⅱ, the institution and order of international society underwent dramatic transformation that obviously featured in the expansion, specialization and systemization of international organizations, for example, the United Nations and its sub-organizations such as the unification of the European Union and American and African regional organizations. In addition, the order of international laws has changed radically. Besides the interacting development among the independent systems of international environmental law, international criminal law, international economic law, that has delicately constituted both the procedural and essential rules of international law, the relation between international laws and sovereign nations has also been re-defined. Through the introduction to the concept of ”complete value of international society”, the connection between sovereignty and international law has been re-interpreted. The most innovative breakthrough was nothing but the concepts of Jus Cogens and Obligations Erga Omnes, as well as the acceptance of the philosophical reasoning behind the concepts. Thus international law has gradually diversified its appearance and, by further development of the above concepts that jointed the different fields of international law, the institution of international law has been overturned. From the aspect of substantial norm, the continuing restriction of applying the opposition rule, development of treaty reservation, succession and admission of nation, ruling of extradition treaties, restriction on national exemption, defining the serious jeopardizing act of international crime, the gradual change of the status of international soft law and the transforming of the national liability system, have attributed to revolution of the content of international law. From the aspect of the procedural norm, the expansion of common jurisdiction and the change of international/domestic lawsuit initiation, have shown great influence that closely connected international criminal law. Therefore, Jus Cogens ought to be the most important medium of the recent development of international law that revealing the combination of Jus Cogens and state responsibility law system, also further led international law to the equivalence of rights and obligations. Frankly, the Vienna Treaty Law Convention signed in 1969, was the milestone of the international law development, which positioned the Jus Cogens in the statute law. If ”power-oriented” is the characteristic of international law in 19th century, then international law after 1950s has gradually dispensed primitiveness and become ”rule-oriented”. Although 1969 could be the beginning of Jus Cognes, suspicion on carrying out this concept in international law still remains. International law scholar, Ian Sinclair, concluded opinions toward Jus Cogens that further confirmed ”Jus Cogens is still a mystery”. Some scholars even express directly that nevertheless adopting Jus Cogens has essentially attributed to the transformation of international law, yet there is worry about the application of Jus Cognes could be contradictive, and even opening the gate for some certain countries to import particular international law systems matching their ideology, thus becoming denial to a diversified international society. Even though contrary opinions toward Jus Cogens remain, from 1968 the concept has been accepted by sovereign countries and also adopted to judgments that further expand Jus Cogens, making this theory combine with other institutions of the international law rather than be confined within treaty law field. Hence, focusing on Jus Cogens and the connection as well as the change of Jus Cogens in the late 40 years, this thesis analyzes the elaboration on Jus Cogens from national practice, international justice and scholars. However, this thesis could only be able to introduce this theory briefly due to the limited length. Therefore, this thesis mainly discuss the following particular sectors of the theory of Jus Cogens: (1) the definition and development of Jus Cogens. (2) the objects regulated by Jus Cogens and the effect. (3) connections between Jus Cogens and other international law concepts newly developing trend. (4) At last, examining and looking back to dialogues made between Jus Cogens and international law.

Before discussing the meaning of international law, it is important to know that law is divided into two large groups, private law and public law. However, the terms these two large groups are better known as international law and international private law. The difference between the two is in the objects they regulate. International law is the law that regulates relations between countries and other legal subjects. International law can be defined as the law that regulates international scale entities. Initially, the definition of international law was only defined as law that regulates behavior and relations between countries. However, in its development, the meaning of international law has expanded to include the relationship between states and international organizations, the relationship between international organizations and other organizations, the relationship between states and individuals in special contexts, and so on. There are six subjects of international law, namely : states, international organizations, the international red cross, the vatican holy see, rebels and individuals. International Law includes a set of rules and principles established through international treaties, the practices of states, as well as legal decisions and interpretations by international institutions. Its aim is to regulate the behavior of states in maintaining peace, managing conflict, promoting cooperation, and protecting human rights. International Law covers various aspects, including the law of war (also known as international humanitarian law), refugee law, maritime law, environmental law, international trade law, international investment law, human rights law, diplomatic law.

Conditions of Democracy in German Austria and Hungary, 1918–1919

This book explores the methods through which international law and its associated innovative global governance mechanisms can strengthen, foster and scale up the impacts of treaty regimes and international law on the ability to implement global governance mechanisms. Examining these questions through the lens of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the book looks at environmental, social and economic treaty regimes. It analyses legal methodologies as well as comparative methods of assessing the relationship between the SDGs and treaty regimes and international law. Contradictions exist between international treaty regimes and principles of international law resulting in conflicting implementation of the treaty regimes and of global governance mechanisms. Without determining these areas of contest and highlighting their detrimental impacts, the SDGs and other efforts at global governance cannot maximize their legal and societal benefits. The book concludes by suggesting a path forward for the SDGs and for international treaty regimes that is forged in a solid understanding and application of the advantages of global governance mechanisms, including reflections from the COVID-19 pandemic experience. Addressing the strengths, gaps and weaknesses related to treaty regimes and global governance mechanisms, the book provides readers with a comprehensive understanding of this increasingly important topic. It will be of interest to students, researchers and practitioners with an interest in sustainability and law.

This article discusses the scope of international obligations of international organizations, considering different formal sources of public international law. Neither the practice nor the doctrine of international law, have shown much interest in this topic until recently. This was mainly due to a widely spread perception of international organizations, which were seen as protectors, not as violators of international law. However, when it became apparent that international organizations could be implicated in abuses of international legal rules as was the case of the UN peace missions in Somalia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Kosovo the topic of international obligations and international responsibility of international organizations became pertinent. The general principle of international law is that every internationally wrongful act entails international responsibility. This principle is also to be applied to international organizations as subjects of international law. In order for internationally wrongful act to exist there need to be a conduct attributable to international organizations which constitutes a breach of its international obligation, regardless of its source. However, most international obligations were established in respect of states. Thus, when working on the rules on international responsibility of international organizations, the UN International Law Commission (ILC) was facing a challenge which did not exist when they were dealing with the responsibility of states. Namely, the small number of international obligations to be applied to international organizations meant that the rules drafted by ILC were not substantiated by much practice. This is one of the reasons why the present article tries to shed some light on the situation with regard to international rules that are to be applied to international organizations. As the International Court of Justice has stated, international organizations are bound by obligations under general rules of international law (international customary law), their constitutions, or international agreements to which they are parties. However, if one were to apply, for example, international customary rules to international organizations, one would face many difficulties. This is due to the specific nature of international organizations as subjects of international law, which is reflected in their limited and functional international personality that is quite different than the personality of states. With these challenges in mind, this article analyses the practice of international law in order to identify treaty and customary law obligations applicable to international organizations. Moreover, it gives a special attention to unilateral acts as a possible source of international obligations of international organizations. Firstly, it discusses whether international law criteria for unilaterally binding commitments of states may be applied to international organizations. Secondly, it presents instances of unilateral declarations by the UN in which these criteria were met (statements of the Secretary-General of the UN). Thirdly, the article discusses rules of international organizations as sources of their international obligations, using the examples of Security Council resolutions and acts based on them (UNMIK regulations). The article concludes that although the scope of international obligations of international organizations is substantially narrower than in the case of states, the practice shows the tendency towards their broadening, especially in the field of international human rights law.

The focus of this paper was to empirically analyze the impacts of economic liberalization on the liberal and electoral democracy in a sample of 106 less developed and developing countries over the period 1970–2016. The economic relationship between these countries and the global trade and the financial system generates a crucial question of to what extent political conditions are affected by this changing relation. To test these relationships, this paper uses V‐Dem's liberal democracy and electoral democracy indices and nine economic liberalization variables. Utilizing two‐step system dynamic panel GMM estimation indicates that trade openness and economic globalization, de facto strongly affects electoral democracy.

Volodymyr Mikhaylovich Koretsky was an eminent jurist, educator, organizer of academic legal scholarship, diplomat, Judge of the International Court of Justice, and its Vice-President. His entire life and professional activity stand as a testament to unwavering dedication to Ukraine and the advancement of legal science. Having received an outstanding university education in law, he commenced his career by teaching and conducting research on issues of civil law, and, following the Civil War, turned to the study of the methodology of legal science. During the 1920s and the first half of the 1930s, he combined scholarly and pedagogical pursuits with public service in republican state agencies. Concurrently, he engaged in robust research in the field of private international law. In the 1930s, he took an active role in establishing higher legal education in Kharkiv, serving as Vice-Rector and Head of the Law Faculty while concurrently fulfilling professorial responsibilities. He chaired the Department of the History of State and Law at the Kharkiv Juridical Institute and, in 1939, defended his doctoral dissertation on the distinctive features of Anglo-American doctrine and international law. Following the attainment of his doctoral degree, all subsequent research by the scholar remained inextricably tied to the development of theories in private international law, international economic law, and public international law. After V. M. Koretsky was elected an Academician, he entered his Kyiv period. He founded the Institute of State and Law and the Department of International Law and Comparative Jurisprudence. Under his leadership, the institute was transformed from a modest research sector into a leading, advanced academic institution. During the 1950s and 1960s, V. M. Koretsky simultaneously engaged in scientific, organizational, and teaching activities alongside diplomatic service: he participated in three sessions of the United Nations General Assembly, served as an advisor to the representative of the USSR to the UN Security Council, worked on the UN Committee on the Progressive Development and Codification of International Law, the UN Commission on Human Rights, and the UN International Law Commission, and contributed as a co-drafter of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. He took part in numerous forums held under the auspices of the UN. The pinnacle of Koretsky’s diplomatic endeavors was his election as a member of the International Court of Justice in The Hague (1960–1970) and his tenure as Vice-President of that Court (1968–1970). In the 1960s and 1970s, V. M. Koretsky’s scholarly work focused on the study of sovereignty, the international legal personality of republics, and the establishment of a stable international legal order based on principles of peace, security, and stability. He was actively engaged in public affairs in Ukraine, promoting the achievements of domestic legal scholarship abroad. His academic and diplomatic endeavors were duly recognized both nationally and internationally. He received the highest honors of the union and republican governments, was elected a member of numerous foreign academies and international associations, and his name was memorialized in the institute he founded, as well as through the posthumous publication of selected works. Key words: Koretsky, legal scholarship, researcher and theorist, doctrine, private international law, international civil law, international economic law, public international law, diplomat, Judge of the International Court of Justice.

PurposeThis paper aims to discuss the positioning of international organisations (IOs) in the realm of international law. It proposes a more robust approach, arguing IOs have legal obligations akin to states to the extent which could be fulfilled by them. This paper suggests making IOs parties to international treaties like the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), International Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) and Geneva Convention 1949 to codify their international responsibilities. In addition, it proposes amending multilateral treaties to grant IOs membership and create binding legal obligations for them, thereby enhancing the overall legal framework for IOs.Design/methodology/approachThe paper opted for qualitative analytical approach of research by referring to international treaties and scholarly papers.FindingsThe authors have evaluated the bindingness of international law on IOs. The authors argue that jus cogens and customary international law are equally binding on IOs. However, treaties could only be binding on IOs to the extent of their consent. The authors have assessed prior violations of IOs. The authors argue that, to prevent such violations by IOs, creating obligations is the first step. Second, amendments are required in the existing international treaties that reflect the foundations of international humanitarian and international human rights law like the Geneva Convention 1949, ICCPR, and ICESCR, to permit IOs to join these treaties, resulting in binding international legal obligations.Research limitations/implicationsThe most prominent assertion of this paper is that IOs as subjects of international law are bound by the principles of international law, including treaty law with consent, customary international laws, general principles of law and peremptory norms. To fulfil these obligations, a regime needs to be introduced wherein amendment is made in treaties to make IOs parties to them and structuring the law on responsibility for IOs. Considering the multifaceted nature of IO, the role it performs in contemporary times requires them to be bound by rules of international law just like states. There is a need to settle their position in global governance and give them more teeth to understand and fulfil their duties to ensure smooth functioning in the long run.Originality/valueThe paper fulfils an identified gap in the positioning of IOs under the international law.