Visibility, impact and relevance in international law

Abstract

How does international law have influence and impact in and on the world? Daniel Joyce’s new book asks this question from a viewpoint that has received surprisingly limited scholarly attention: the role of the media and an engaged public. A wide-ranging and original work, the book raises pivotal questions about power and legitimacy, patterns of influence, and agency. My reading rests on my disciplinary specialisation at the intersection of anthropology—in particular the study of international organisations, documents, bureaucracy, and expertise1—and international law, complemented by research on the history of human rights and human rights education.2 Joyce’s book is loosely divided into two distinct areas of inquiry. The first of these regards the long, complex, and still-evolving path of media regulation under international law. My attention is drawn to the book’s second part, particularly Chapters 4–6, in which he discusses the role of an informed public and informed media in the sustained legitimacy and influence of international law. In this essay, I will bring Joyce’s book into conversation with my ethnography of the UN Human Rights Committee, the treaty body that monitors state compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR).3 Specifically, I will connect the book with previously untheorised fieldnotes of an NGO coalition meeting at the Palais Wilson, the headquarters of the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (UN OHCHR) in Geneva.4 In the meeting, NGO delegates—who, in the sessions of the Human Rights Committee, very much occupy the role of an ‘enlightened public’—discussed the issuing of a press release following the Constructive Dialogue between a state party and the Human Rights Committee in which the periodic report submitted by the state is discussed.