Yuval Shany, Assessing the Effectiveness of International Courts

Abstract

Two years after Greg Shaffer and Tom Ginsburg have proclaimed an ‘empirical turn in international legal scholarship’, empirical research is very much en vogue among international lawyers, but continues to be perceived as a ‘new frontier’. By contrast, scholarship on international courts and tribunals has been en vogue for a few decades now. It is not a new field by any means, and yet the focus of inquiry is changing—towards a fuller analysis of the functions and agendas of international courts and tribunals, which are no longer seen just as dispute settlers, but also (or even primarily) as law-enforcers, law-makers, norm entrepreneurs, review agencies, etc. Yuval Shany has been a key figure in this move towards such a fuller analysis; his research has done a lot to broaden our understanding of the many functions of international courts and tribunals. With his new book, he now seems to take his own empirical turn, and readers are encouraged to follow him on this path.