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I N T E R N AT I O N A L C O U RT S A N D
TRIBUNALS SERIES
General Editors
RU T H M A C K E N Z I E
C E S A R E P. R . RO M A N O
MIKAEL RASK MADSEN
L AU R E N C E R . H E L F E R
Duke University and iCourts:
Center of Excellence for International Courts,
University of Copenhagen
1
1
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP,
United Kingdom
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship,
and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of
Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries
© Karen J. Alter, Laurence R. Helfer, Mikael Rask Madsen 2018
The moral rights of the authors have been asserted
First Edition published in 2018
Impression: 1
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted
by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics
rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the
above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above
You must not circulate this work in any other form
and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer
Crown copyright material is reproduced under Class Licence
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and the Queen’s Printer for Scotland
Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press
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Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and
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Preface and Acknowledgements
International Court Authority reflects the aspirations and achievements of iCourts: The
Danish National Research Foundation’s Centre of Excellence for International Courts.
Established in 2012, iCourts is a hub for research on international courts and their
impact on law, politics, and society. The center’s goal is to build theory and foster col-
laboration through empirical comparisons of the real-world workings and influence of
international courts (ICs). An additional priority is to study established and nascent
ICs, as well as those operating in different, often understudied, parts of the world.
Our project on IC authority is the product of a series of workshops at which an
interdisciplinary group of experts came together to discuss how contextual factors af-
fect the operation and influence of different international courts. The workshops in-
cluded scholars working at the intersection of law, political science, and sociology, each
of whom had deep empirical knowledge of at least one global IC or regional court in
Europe, Africa, or Latin America. We also sought out new voices, mixing junior aca-
demics with more established scholars.
For the first workshop, held at iCourts in September 2013, participants prepared
short, reflective, free-form memos that mostly drew on each scholar’s “backpack of
knowledge.”1 The workshop engendered far-reaching conversations among inter-
national relations theorists, scholars who embrace third-world approaches to inter-
national law, and academics who employ diverse approaches to studying law in action.
The dialogue challenged presumptions that arose from each scholar’s predominant
focus on individual ICs operating in specific geopolitical and regional contexts.
The first workshop generated a first-cut list of different contexts that plausibly affect
the activity and influence of different ICs. The workshop also yielded a request for a
common theoretical object that all participants could engage with and compare across
issue areas, cases, or time. As a group, we agreed that IC “authority” would be our focus
point, that we would set aside issues of IC legitimacy, and that we would concentrate
on the practices of different actors that engage with ICs rather than investigate those
actors’ beliefs about IC authority. We did not, however, attempt to operationalize what
IC authority might entail beyond these collective decisions.
The three editors then got to work, reviewing the relevant literatures and generating
a new approach that would allow the contributors to investigate how context shapes IC
authority. Our second workshop, held in May 2014 at Duke University Law School,
discussed an early draft of an introduction to the authority framework and papers that
applied the framework to different courts. The second workshop generated several in-
sights: that IC authority does not operate on a continuum but rather in response to re-
lationships with various audiences; that these relationships can develop independently
of each other; that IC authority can both grow and diminish over time; and that the
1
Claire Dickerson coined this term. At the time of the first workshop at iCourts, Claire, who was
fighting pancreatic cancer, was unable to travel outside of the US. She nevertheless insisted on writing
a memo and engaging with the other papers. Claire’s memo drew on a very big “backpack of know-
ledge” about a little-known court created by the Organization for the Harmonization of Business Law
in Africa (OHADA) and operating in Francophone Africa. Notwithstanding her illness, Claire re-
mained committed to the project. She attended the second workshop at Duke Law School, published
an article in the special issue of Law and Contemporary Problems, and revised the article for posthu-
mous publication as a chapter in this book. Claire passed away on September 2, 2015. Her wisdom,
insights, and contributions leave an indelible mark on all of us.
vi Preface and Acknowledgements
concept of authority provides only limited insight into the relative power of different
ICs. The second workshop served as the basis for a special issue of the journal Law and
Contemporary Problems, published in January 2016.
Although the special issue provides a solid foundation for exploring IC authority,
much was left undone. In particular, we had not put our framework in conversa-
tion with other approaches to studying IC authority; we had not attempted to draw
overarching conclusions from the empirical studies of different courts; and we did not
include increasingly active ICs in Latin America and Africa.
The third and final workshop, held in September 2015 at Northwestern University’s
Buffett Institute for Global Studies, broadened our circle of participants. We invited
Tendayi Achiume and Solomon Ebobrah, scholars with expertise in African courts and
third-world approaches to international law, to write papers on the SADC Tribunal
and ECOWAS Court, respectively. Karen and Larry also presented a paper on the
Andean Tribunal of Justice (ATJ), which extended their earlier research to focus on the
ATJ’s “crisis period” between 2006 and 2015.
We also brought in six commentators whose work engages issues related to insti-
tutional authority at the national level or to authority beyond the nation state. The
commentators draw from the disciplines of legal theory, philosophy, anthropology,
and international relations theory, and they tend to approach the topic of IC authority
from a different and less empirically focused perspective. It was a challenging group
of interlocutors, especially because these scholars had not been part of the project’s
earlier decision to separate the study of legitimacy and authority, to put aside norma-
tive issues, and to focus on practices rather than the beliefs of actors.
This has been a highly productive and engaging collaboration. Not one of the parti-
cipants dropped out of the project; everyone conducted new research; and all of us ser-
iously rethought our prior assumptions in response to feedback from a truly excellent
group of scholars. It is not an exaggeration to say that this collaboration forced each of
us to consider new approaches to topics we thought we already knew well. And, just as
wonderfully, we expanded our circle of friends.
We extend heartfelt thanks to the academic institutions and collaborators that helped
us to realize the aspirations of iCourts and this book. The Danish National Research
Foundation, Duke’s Center for International and Comparative Law, and Northwestern
University’s Buffett Institute for Global Studies provided crucial financial and admin-
istrative support. We also are grateful to our research and administrative assistants,
without whom we could not have assembled our delightful and delicious meetings or
produced our publications. Our thanks are in particular due to Maria Rezende Borges,
Andrew Day, Daniel Echeverri, Alison Prince, Fabian Rabet-Levetzeu, Lilli Streymnes,
Henrik Stampe Lund, and Ali Tripp. We are also indebted to John Louth, Merel
Alstein, and Natasha Flemming at OUP, and to Nancy Rebecca at Newgen. Finally,
this book would not have been possible without the love and support of our respective
families, who let us trot the globe to study ICs in far-flung regions of the world.
Karen J. Alter, Evanston, IL
Laurence R. Helfer, Durham, NC
Mikael Rask Madsen, Copenhagen
April 30, 2018
Contents
List of Tables and Figures xi
List of Abbreviations xiii
List of Contributors xv
I . T H E VA R I E D AU T H O R I T Y O F
I N T E R N AT I O N A L C O U RT S
1. International Court Authority in a Complex World 3
Karen J. Alter, Laurence R. Helfer, and Mikael Rask Madsen
2. How Context Shapes the Authority of International Courts 24
Karen J. Alter, Laurence R. Helfer, and Mikael Rask Madsen
I I . I N T E R N AT I O N A L C O U RT S I N T H E I R S O C I A L
AND POLITICAL CONTEXT
Africa
3. The East African Court of Justice: Human Rights and Business
Actors Compared 59
James Thuo Gathii
4. The ECOWAS Community Court of Justice: A Dual Mandate
with Skewed Authority 82
Solomon T. Ebobrah
5. The OHADA Common Court of Justice and Arbitration:
Its Authority in the Formal and Informal Economy 103
Claire Moore Dickerson
6. The SADC Tribunal: Sociopolitical Dissonance and the Authority
of International Courts 124
E. Tendayi Achiume
Europe
10. The Court of Justice of the European Union: Changing Authority
in the Twenty-First Century 223
R. Daniel Kelemen
11. The European Court of Human Rights: From the Cold War to the
Brighton Declaration and Backlash 243
Mikael Rask Madsen
I I I . I N T E R N AT I O N A L C O U RT AU T H O R I T Y
IN QUESTION
16. International Court Authority in Question: Introduction to Part III 365
Karen J. Alter, Laurence R. Helfer, and Mikael Rask Madsen
17. Authority of International Courts: Scope, Power, and Legitimacy 374
Andrei Marmor
18. International Courts: Command v. Reflexive Authority 382
Michael Zürn
19. International Courts’ De Facto Authority and its Justification 391
Ingo Venzke
20. Jurisdiction, Politics, and Truth-Making: International Courts
and the Formation of Translocal Legal Cultures 403
Jessica Greenberg
21. Power or Authority; Actions or Beliefs 412
Andreas Føllesdal
22. Authority and International Courts: A Comment on
“Content-Independent” Social Science 422
Ian Hurd
Contents ix
I V. G ROW I N G A N D D I M I N I S H I N G I C AU T H O R I T Y
23. Conclusion: Context, Authority, Power 435
Karen J. Alter, Laurence R. Helfer, and Mikael Rask Madsen
Index 461
List of Tables and Figures
Tables
Table 2.1 Comparisons of IC Authority in Fact across Contexts 37
Table 2.2 Conjectures about Contextual Factors and IC Authority 50
Table 2.3 Contextual Factors Explored in the Empirical Chapters 53
Table 11.1 Distribution of ECtHR Cases per Country 260
Table 13.1 GATT Cases per Decade 305
Table 13.2 Participants and Third Participants in Panels and Appeals
(1995–2017) 309
Figures
Fig. 2.1 Three Types of Authority in Fact 33
Fig. 2.2 The Relationship of IC Authority to IC Power 54
Fig. 11.1 ECtHR Judgments Delivered (1960–1989) 253
Fig. 11.2 ECtHR Cases by Country (1975–1989) 254
Fig. 11.3 ECtHR Judgments Delivered (1990–2014) 258
Fig. 11.4 ECtHR Judgments Delivered per Year (1999–2014) 265
Fig. 11.5 Number of Cases Pending before Committee of Ministers 269
Fig. 12.1 Map of Islamic Law States 282
Fig. 12.2 Muslim Population (Raw Numbers and Percentages) in ILS
and Non-ILS 282
Fig. 12.3 ILS and Non-ILS Attempts at Peaceful Resolution
of Territorial Disputes (1945–2006) 288
Fig. 13.1 Participants and Third Participants in WTO Panels and
Appeals (1995–2017) 310
Fig. 13.2 Average Size of GATT/WTO Delegations 318
Fig. 13.3 WTO/GATT-Related Articles in Westlaw Database 324
Fig. 13.4 Participation in the WTO Public Forum 325
Fig. 23.1 Growing IC De Facto Authority 455
Fig. 23.2 Diminishing IC De Facto Authority 458
List of Abbreviations
AB Appellate Body
ACtHR African Court of Human and Peoples’ Rights
ACWL Advisory Center on WTO Law
ALBA Alianza Bolivariana para los Pueblos de Nuestra América
ANC African National Congress
ANCYL African National Congress Youth League
ATJ Andean Tribunal of Justice
BRIC Brazil, Russia, India, and China
BVerfG Bundesverfassungsgericht
CARICOM Caribbean Community
CARIFTA Caribbean Free Trade Association
CCC Constitutional Court of Columbia
CCJ Caribbean Court of Justice
CCJA Common Court of Justice and Arbitration
CEJIL Center for Justice and International Law
CET Common External Tariff
CJEU Court of Justice of the European Union
CoE Council of Europe
COMEX Committee on Commerce
DSB Dispute Settlement Body
DSU Dispute Settlement Understanding
EABC East African Business Council
EAC East African Community
EACJ East African Court of Justice
EALS East African Law Society
EC European Community
ECCJ ECOWAS Community Court of Justice
ECHR European Convention on Human Rights
ECJ European Court of Justice
ECOWAS Economic Community of West African States
ECtHR European Court of Human Rights
EFF Economic Freedom Fighters
EU European Union
FTLRP Fast Track Land Reform Program
GA General Assembly
GATT General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade
GCC Gulf Cooperation Council
GCL General Commercial Code
IACtHR Inter-American Court of Human Rights
IAS Inter-American System
ICC International Criminal Court
ICERD International Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination
ICJ International Court of Justice
IC international court
ICTY International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia
IIDC Instituto Iberoamericano de Derecho Constitucional
IIJ Instituto de Investigaciones Jurídicas
ILS Islamic law states
xiv List of Abbreviations
France. This chapter, written in 2014, was prepared for publication in this book before her
untimely yet anticipated death.
Solomon T. Ebobrah is Dean of Faculty at the Niger Delta University, Faculty of Law.
Dr. Ebobrah received his doctorate in International Human Rights Law in 2009 from the
University of Pretoria. Previous positions include a Post-Doctoral Fellow at iCourts: Centre of
Excellence for International Courts, University of Copenhagen Faculty of Law. Ebobrah is the
author of numerous articles on human rights in Africa.
Manfred Elsig is Associate Professor of International Relations and Deputy Managing Director
of the World Trade Institute of the University of Bern. His research focuses primarily on the
politics of international trade, regional trade agreements, European trade policy, international
organizations, US–EU relations, and private actors in global politics. Previous publications
have appeared in International Studies Quarterly, European Journal of International Relations,
European Union Politics, Journal of European Public Policy, Journal of Common Market Studies,
Review of International Organizations, Review of International Political Economy, and World
Trade Review. Elsig has been Visiting Lecturer/Visiting Professor at the University of Zurich,
the University of Geneva, the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies,
the London School of Economics and Political Science, and the Thunderbird School of Global
Management.
Andreas Føllesdal is Professor of Political Philosophy, Faculty of Law, University of Oslo. He
is Co-Director of PluriCourts, a Centre of Excellence for the Study of the Legitimate Roles
of the Judiciary in the Global Order. In 1991 he gained a PhD in Philosophy from Harvard
University. Føllesdal publishes in the field of political philosophy, mainly on issues of inter-
national political theory, globalization/Europeanization, human rights, and socially respon-
sible investing.
James Thuo Gathii is the Wing-Tat Lee Chair in International Law and Professor of Law.
Gathii’s research and expertise is in the areas of public international law, international eco-
nomic law, including law and development, and international trade law, as well as issues of
good governance and legal reform as they relate to the Third World and sub-Saharan Africa in
particular. He has published over fifty articles and book chapters on international economic
and trade law as well as on public international law and on good governance in Africa. Gathii is
author of The Contested Empowerment of Kenya’s Judiciary, 2010–2015 (2016); African Regional
Trade Agreements as Legal Regimes (2011); War, Commerce and International Law (2010), and
over eighty articles and book chapters.
Jessica Greenberg is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Illinois, Urbana-
Champaign. Her research focuses on the anthropology of democracy, revolution, postsocialism,
and youth activism in the Balkans. Greenberg is the author of After the Revolution: Youth,
Democracy, and the Politics of Disappointment in Serbia (2014). Her new research focuses on
international human rights law and legal cultures in the context of European integration.
Previously, Greenberg was an Academy Scholar at the Harvard Academy for International
and Area Studies, and an Assistant Professor in Communication Studies at Northwestern
University. She earned her PhD in Anthropology from the University of Chicago in 2007.
She recently earned a Master of Studies in Law at the College of Law, University of Illinois.
John Hagan is the John D. MacArthur Professor of Sociology and Law at Northwestern
University and Senior Research Fellow at the American Bar Foundation in Chicago. Hagan
is an expert on criminal law in its context. He is author of numerous books and articles,
including Justice in the Balkans: Prosecuting War Crimes at The Hague Tribunal (2003); “Death
in Darfur” in Science ; “Racial Targeting of Sexual Violence in Darfur” in the American Journal
of Public Health ; and of “The Collective Dynamics of Racial Dehumanization and Genocidal
Victimization” in the American Sociological Review. His paper with Gabrielle Ferrales and
List of Contributors xvii
Guillermina Jasso on “How Law Rules: Torture, Terror and the Normative Judgments of Iraqi
Judges” received the 2009 Best Article Prize from the Law & Society Association.
Laurence R. Helfer, the Harry R. Chadwick, Sr. Professor of Law, Duke University is an ex-
pert in international law whose scholarly interests include interdisciplinary analysis of inter-
national law and institutions, human rights, international litigation and dispute settlement,
and international intellectual property law and policy. Helfer has authored more than seventy
publications and has lectured widely on his diverse research interests. His coauthored books
include The Law and Politics of the Andean Tribunal of Justice (2017); The World Blind Union
Guide to the Marrakesh Treaty (2017); Human Rights and Intellectual Property: Mapping the
Global Interface (2011); and Human Rights (2nd ed., 2009).
Alexandra Huneeus is Associate Professor of Law at the University of Wisconsin Madison
School of Law, where she also serves as Director of the Global Legal Studies Center and
Chair of the Human Rights Program. Her work stands at the intersection of law, political
science, and sociology and has been published in the American Journal of International Law,
Law and Social Inquiry, Yale Journal of International Law, Cornell International Law Journal,
Harvard International Law Journal, and Leiden Journal of International Law, among others.
She is the editor (with Javier Couso and Rachel Sieder), of Cultures of Legality: Judicialization
and Political Activism in Latin America (2010).
Ian Hurd is Associate Professor of Political Science at Northwestern University with interests
at the intersection of international law, international politics, and international institutions.
His latest book, How to Do Things with International Law (2017), follows the idea of the
international rule of law in contemporary politics. Hurd is author of After Anarchy: Legitimacy
and Power in the UN Security Council (2007), which won the Myres McDougal Prize of the
Policy Sciences Society and the Chadwick Alger Prize of the International Studies Association,
and International Organizations: Politics, Law, Practice (2013). He is coeditor of the Oxford
Handbook of International Organizations (2015) and leads the Politics of International
Law working group at Northwestern University. Hurd has been chair of the International
Organization section of the International Studies Association and a visiting scholar at the
American Bar Foundation in Chicago, the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University,
EHESS in Paris, WZB-Berlin, and Sciences Po in Paris.
R. Daniel Kelemen is Professor of Political Science and Law and Jean Monnet Chair in
European Union Politics at Rutgers University. Kelemen’s current research interests include
the politics of the European Union, law and politics, comparative political economy, and
comparative public policy. Kelemen’s 2011 book, Eurolegalism: The Transformation of Law and
Regulation in the European Union, won the Best Book Award from the European Union Studies
Association. He is author or editor of five other books including The Oxford Handbook of Law
and Politics, and author of over 100 articles and book chapters. Prior to Rutgers, Kelemen
was Fellow in Politics, Lincoln College, University of Oxford. He has been a Member of the
Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, visiting fellow in the Program in Law and Public
Affairs (LAPA) at Princeton University, and a Fulbright Fellow at the Centre for European
Policy Studies in Brussels.
Ron Levi is the George Ignatieff Chair of Peace and Conflict Studies, and Associate Professor
at the Munk School of Global Affairs and the Department of Sociology at the University of
Toronto. He is also cross-appointed in Law, Political Science, and Criminology & Sociolegal
Studies. His research focuses on the internationalization of law, and on the social and pol-
itical dimensions of responses to crime and atrocities. Levi launched and directs the Global
Justice Lab in the Munk School of Global Affairs, focusing on justice systems under stress and
strain. His work has been published in, among others, British Journal of Criminology, Law &
Contemporary Problems, Journal of International Law & Politics, Law & Social Inquiry, Social
xviii List of Contributors
Forces, and Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales. Levi is also Permanent Visiting Professor at
the iCourts: University of Copenhagen’s Centre of Excellence for International Courts.
Mikael Rask Madsen is the EURECO Professor of European Law and Integration and
Director of iCourts: Center of Excellence for International Courts at the University of
Copenhagen Faculty of Law. Madsen’s research is focused on international courts and the glo-
balization of legal practices and practitioners. Madsen is author of some sixty articles and book
chapters, as well as La Genese de l’Europe des droits de l’homme: Enjeux juriridiques et strategies
d’État (2010); and coeditor of The European Court of Human Rights between Law and Politics
(2011/13); Making Human Rights Intelligible: Towards a Sociology of Human Rights (2013);
and Transnational Power Elites: The New Professionals of Governance, Law and Security (2013).
Andrei Marmor is the Jacob Gould Schurman Professor of Philosophy and Law at Cornell
University. Prior to joining Cornell in 2015, Marmor was Professor of Philosophy and
the Maurice Jones Jr. Professor of Law at the University of Southern California. His re-
search interests span philosophy of law; moral, social, and political philosophy; and phil-
osophy of language. Marmor has published dozens of articles, six book monographs, and a
number of edited volumes. His most recent books include Social Conventions: From Language
to Law (2009); Philosophy of Law (2011); and The Language of Law (2014). His books and
articles also appeared in numerous translations, including in Chinese, Spanish, Portuguese,
Hebrew, and Italian.
Emilia Justyna Powell is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Notre
Dame, with a concurrent appointment at the Notre Dame Law School. Professor Powell
specializes in international law, international courts, and the Islamic legal tradition. She is
author of Domestic Law Goes Global: Legal Traditions and International Courts (with Sara
McLaughlin Mitchell, 2011). Her published work appears in International Organization,
Journal of Politics, International Studies Quarterly, Journal of Peace Research, Journal of Conflict
Resolution, Law and Contemporary Problems, etc. Her current book project, Islamic Law States
and International Law: Peaceful Settlement of Disputes, provides a comprehensive examination
of differences and similarities between Islamic law and classical international law, especially in
the context of dispute settlement. Powell has been a fellow at the Oxford Centre for Islamic
Studies, and iCourts: Centre for International Courts, University of Copenhagen Faculty of
Law. Born in Toruń, Poland, Professor Powell received her legal education in the University of
Nicholas Copernicus (Poland), Jean Monnet Centre for European Studies, and the University
of Cambridge.
Sergio Puig is Associate Professor of Law at University of Arizona. Puig’s academic interests
include international economic law, international arbitration, law and society, network ana-
lysis, and the law and the legal profession. Puig has taught International Investment Law and
International Trade Law at Duke Law and Stanford Law School, where he was the SPILS
Teaching Fellow. Puig also worked for over three years in the young professionals program for
lawyers and scholars at the World Bank Group and ICSID, and has practiced in leading firms
in Mexico City and Washington D.C. Puig also cofounded (with Joost Pauwelyn) tradelab.org
an online community-based platform to facilitate legal assistance and services related to inter-
national trade and investment matters.
Gregory Shaffer is Chancellor’s Professor of Law, and Director, Center on Globalization, Law
and Society (GLAS) at University of California, Irvine School of Law. His publications include
Transnational Legal Orders (2015); Transnational Legal Ordering and State Change (2013);
Dispute Settlement at the WTO: The Developing Country Experience (2010); When Cooperation
Fails: The International Law and Politics of Genetically Modified Foods (2009); Defending
Interests: Public–Private Partnerships in WTO Litigation (2003); and Transatlantic Governance
in the Global Economy (2001); and over 100 articles and book chapters on international
List of Contributors xix
economic law, global governance, and globalization’s impact on domestic regulation. Professor
Shaffer’s work is cross-disciplinary and empirical, addressing such topics as transnational legal
ordering, new legal realist theory, the World Trade Organization, and comparative institu-
tional approaches to trade–social policy conflicts.
Ingo Venzke is Associate Professor at the Department of International and European Law
and Director of the Amsterdam Center for International Law (ACIL). His monographs in-
clude How Interpretation Makes International Law: On Semantic Change and Normative Twists
(2012); and In Whose Name? A Public Law Theory of International Adjudication (with Armin
von Bogdandy, 2014). He is editor-in-chief of the Leiden Journal of International Law (with
Eric de Brabandere). Venzke’s regular teaching includes courses on international dispute settle-
ment, international economic law, and methods of legal research. His main research interests
include the theory and practice of interpretation as well as contingencies in the history of
international (economic) law.
Leslie Vinjamuri is Co-Director of the Centre for the International Politics of Conflict, Rights
and Justice, and a Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in International Relations at the School
of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. She founded and cochairs the London
Transitional Justice Network. Prior to joining SOAS, she was on the faculty of the School
of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, and worked at the United States Agency for
International Development and the Congressional Research Service. Vinjamuri is the author
of several articles and a contributor to many edited volumes on the international politics of
conflict, norms, and rights-related topics. Her publications have appeared in numerous jour-
nals including International Security, Ethics and International Affairs, Survival, International
Journal of Transitional Justice, and Annual Review of Political Science. Her current research focus
is on the politics and impact of international criminal justice and accountability, competition
and change in the international humanitarian market, the role of transitional justice in demo-
cratic transitions, religion and human rights, and UN Security Council diplomacy.
Michael Zürn is Professor of International Relations at the Freie Universität Berlin, and
Director of the Global Governance research unit at WZB Berlin Social Science Center. His
research examines governance beyond the nation state, and the legitimacy and authority of
global governance institutions. He has—among other themes—most extensively written on
the emergence and functioning of inter-and supranational institutions, as well as on the
normative tensions and political conflicts that these developments unfold. His books include
A Theory of Global Governance: Authority, Legitimacy, and Contestation (2018); Protecting the
Individual from International Authority: Human Rights in International Organizations (edited
with Monika Heupel, 2017); and Historical Institutionalism and International Relations:
Explaining Institutional Development in World Politics (edited with Thomas Rixen and Lora
Anne Viola, 2016). Relevant articles include “From Constitutional Rule to Loosely Coupled
Spheres of Liquid Authority: A Reflexive Approach” in International Theory (2017), and “The
Politicization of World Politics and its Effects: Eight Propositions” in European Political Science
Review (2014).
PA RT I
T H E VA R I E D AU T H O R I T Y
O F I N T E R N AT I O N A L C O U RT S
1
International Court Authority in
a Complex World
Karen J. Alter, Laurence R. Helfer, and Mikael Rask Madsen
1
Karen J. Alter, The New Terrain of International Law: Courts, Politics, Rights (2014).
International Court Authority. Karen J. Alter, Laurence R. Helfer, and Mikael Rask Madsen. © Karen J.
Alter, Laurence R. Helfer, and Mikael Rask Madsen 2018. Published 2018 by Oxford University Press
4 International Court Authority in a Complex World
activities may fail to acknowledge the rulings as binding or take meaningful steps to
modify their behavior in response to them. In short, most ICs possess de facto au-
thority that is partial, variable, and highly dependent on a range of different audiences
and contexts.
As Chapter 2 details, we assess variations in IC de facto authority by examining
the practices of key audiences, including their public statements, conduct, and other
observable behavior. In particular, we develop a five-level metric that corresponds to
these practices. The first level, no authority in fact, describes an IC that is inactive des-
pite known violations of the law, or that issues decisions that are widely ignored. The
second, narrow authority, exists when only the litigants to the dispute both accept a
ruling as legally binding and take consequential steps toward giving it effect. The next
category, intermediate authority, exists when this conjunctive standard of recognition
and meaningful action extends to potential future litigants, government officials, and
national judges. The fourth level, extensive authority, exists when this standard is met
by a wider field that includes both legal actors—such as bar associations, law firms, and
scholars—and non-legal actors—such as civil society groups—who engage and seek to
influence actions and legal understandings. A final category—popular authority—exists
when IC rulings are viewed as binding and trigger consequential changes in behavior
among the public at large, including the major participants in policy debates (e.g.,
politicians, the news media, and activists).
These labels may suggest that IC de facto authority exists along a continuum from
narrow to popular. In fact, the five categories correspond to different audiences, and
each level is independent of the others. An IC thus may or may not gain de facto
authority across the full spectrum of audiences. For example, a court may have ex-
tensive authority, in that its rulings are viewed by scholars, civil society groups, and
legal practitioners as binding and as requiring changes in the behavior. But those
same rulings may lack narrow authority because they are ignored by the parties to
the dispute, or lack intermediate authority because, while respected by the parties,
they are disregarded by similarly situated litigants and government officials. De facto
authority can also vary by issue area and by country; a court can have narrow, inter-
mediate, or extensive authority across the full range of disputes and states subject
to its jurisdiction, or such authority can be confined to specific policy domains or
subsets of states.
We argue in Chapter 2 that what explains these variations is not the design of IC,
the identity of their judges, or their rulings, but rather a set of influential contexts. We
identify three broad institutional, social, and political contexts that can hinder or aid
an IC in establishing its authority: (1) institution-specific factors, (2) factors related to
IC constituencies and their varied interests, and (3) global, regional, and domestic con-
texts. These contexts suggest that structures exogenous to a court influence the conduct
of the relevant audiences.
The framework that we develop to measure de facto authority makes a number of
bold conceptual claims that challenge existing scholarship on ICs. First, we separate
the study of authority from the study of legitimacy. This bifurcation recognizes that a
court can do everything normative theorists expect of a legitimate international judi-
cial body and still not possess authority in fact.
Second, we argue that IC authority can be identified and assessed by studying the
practices of key audiences—litigants, similarly situated potential litigants, govern-
ments, judges, and larger constituent communities (such as lawyers, scholars, NGOs).
Exactly why actors follow IC rulings is an important and interesting question. But it
is not a question that our framework seeks to answer. Rather, we observe practices and
Chapter 1 5
investigate how contextual factors shape those practices and how they contribute to
variation in IC authority across different audiences.
Third, our approach rejects a number of claims voiced in global governance de-
bates which assume that IC authority is an all-or-nothing binary. For example, some
audiences may treat a particular court as authoritative, while others, who as a formal
matter are also bound by the court’s mandates, may reject that authority in whole or in
part. The rejection by one audience does not per se negate an IC’s authority with other
actors. In addition, IC authority is not a one-way ratchet; authority once gained may
be later lost, even if the formal legal rules remain the same. Similarly, it is inaccurate to
portray IC authority as either residing at the international or at the national level. In
reality, authority is shared, which means that gaining international legal authority does
not necessarily involve subtracting national legal authority. However, as we explain in
Chapter 2, a fundamental challenge ICs face is that they must establish their authority
within a congested space of competing institutions and entrenched legal understand-
ings, and doing so may require changes to national legal understandings.2
Finally, our framework is generalizable and interdisciplinary. We invited eighteen
scholars from law, political science, and sociology to apply the framework, investigating
how particular contextual factors enhance or undermine whether one or more audi-
ences treat IC rulings as authoritative. The book’s thirteen empirical chapters focus
on ICs in Africa, Latin America, and Europe, as well as on courts with a global reach.
They include ICs that apply international economic rules, human rights, and mass
atrocities law. Each chapter compares at least two different contextual dimensions of
IC authority. Some chapters engage in comparisons over time or between courts, while
others assess IC authority across issue areas and countries. We also asked experts who
study international law and global governance institutions to comment and critique
our IC authority framework. We allude to some of the commentators’ views later in
this chapter, but our principal engagement with them appears in Chapter 16, the
introduction to Part III of this book.
The remainder of this chapter proceeds as follows. The next section summarizes
dominant approaches to studying the authority of international institutions and
courts, highlighting how our framework differs. Section III provides a roadmap to the
rest of the book, summarizing the principal findings of each empirical chapter and the
contributions of the commentators and previewing the book’s conclusion, which sum-
marizes the insights gained from our study of how context shapes IC authority.
2
Nico Krisch has theorized this problem of institutional multiplicity in global governance as liquid
authority. See Nico Krisch, Liquid Authority in Global Governance, 9 Int’l Theory (2017).
6 International Court Authority in a Complex World
approaches or their applications, but rather to highlight how our own approach con-
trasts with these leading schools of thought.
3
Compare to the discussion of the authority of international law in Basak Çali, The Authority
of International Law: Obedience, Respect, and Rebuttal (2015).
4
See, e.g., Georg Nolte, Treaties and Subsequent Practice (2013).
Chapter 1 7
B. Normative approaches
Normative approaches measure authority against some ideal or ideal-type character-
istics of an institution. Normative scholars presume that the compliance pull of IC
rulings comes from a sense that the law or the institution applying it is legitimate. If
this is true, then only judgments and courts that meet certain normative thresholds for
legitimacy can possess de facto legal authority. For this reason, normative approaches
suggest that an IC’s success or failure in reaching normative goals helps explain why
subjects do or do not follow its rulings.
There are a number of prevalent normative approaches to evaluating legal authority.
Many scholars have built on the eight criteria for legality famously developed by Lon
Fuller, which according to his thesis generate an internal morality.5 Brunnée and
Toope’s interactional theory, for example, applies Fuller’s criteria to international law.
They accept Fuller’s argument that fulfilling these criteria contributes to legal subjects’
sense of obligation. “Fidelity is generated, and in our terminology obligation is felt,
because adherence to the eight criteria of legality (a ‘practice of legality’) produces law
that is legitimate in the eyes of the persons to whom it is addressed.”6 One can translate
Brunnée and Toope’s claim into an empirical argument—if lawyers assess international
law and IC rulings against Fuller’s (or another set of ) abstract legal criteria, then a
failure to meet those very criteria might explain the gap between delegated and realized
legal authority. This model resembles in some ways the idea of perceived legitimacy dis-
cussed later under sociological approaches, but it presupposes a highly specific source
of legitimacy.
A second normative approach focuses on the processes of making and applying the
law. This approach measures the legitimation of legal rules and institutions against
normative criteria such as transparency, proportionality, accessibility, accountability,
and representativeness. Scholars of Global Administrative Law developed such criteria
to analyze contemporary international law in a range of judicial and quasi-judicial
settings.7 A related approach is found in the work of André Nollkaemper, who sees
“international public goods” as being legitimated at the crossroads of substantive and
procedural law.8 Armin von Bogdandy and Ingo Venzke emphasize different aspects
of the lawmaking and law application process, raising the normative question of in
“whose name” ICs exercise public authority.9 Interestingly, these authors point not
only to procedural elements of IC legitimation, such as those mentioned above, but
also to the need for public engagement, whereby courts consider the broader impli-
cations of their rulings and the groups that interact with them. This engagement may
5
According to Fuller, the eight criteria define an “inner morality” to the law. The criteria include
that law must be: (1) sufficiently general; (2) publicly promulgated; (3) prospective (i.e., applicable
only to future behavior, not past); (4) intelligible to those who must follow the law; (5) free of contra-
dictions; (6) relatively constant, so that they don’t continuously change from day to day; (7) possible
to obey; and (8) there must be congruence between legal norms and the actions of officials operating
under the law.
6
Jutta Brunnée & Stephen J. Toope, Legitimacy and Legality in International Law: An
Interactional Account 27 (2010).
7
For a discussion of the differences between global administrative law and the study of ICs, see
Mikael Rask Madsen, Judicial Globalization: The Proliferation of International Courts in Research
Handbook on Global Administrative Law (Sabino Cassese ed. 2016).
8
André Nollkaemper, International Adjudication of Global Public Goods: The Intersection of
Substance and Procedure, 23 Eur. J. Int’ L. 769 (2012).
9
Armin Von Bogdandy & Ingo Venzke, In Whose Name?: A Public Law Theory of
International Adjudication (2014).
8 International Court Authority in a Complex World
well politicize an IC, but for von Bogdandy and Venzke engagement is necessary to
legitimate public authority.10
A different type of normative approach, which is linked to the legal formalist
accounts discussed earlier, considers the legitimacy of the actors that delegated power
to an international institution in the first instance. The literature on international
criminal law, for example, often highlights the fact that some ad hoc tribunals have
been set up by the United Nations (UN). For some scholars, a UN pedigree is an
implicit endorsement by world society, while for others the UN Security Council’s
lack of democratic representation undermines the legitimacy and authority of these
tribunals.11 Strictly speaking, these normative origins have little relevance for assessing
either the de jure or de facto authority of international criminal tribunals. Thus, while
we do not categorically reject the claim that an IC’s origins may influence the practices
of key audiences, we do not accept that a court’s normative origins meaningfully deter-
mine its de facto authority.12
A more rational variant of the normative account of authority is found in the work
of Joseph Raz, in particular his “service conception of authority”.13 Raz legitimates the
exercise of authority by observing that, in some instances, obeying an authority serves
individuals’ interests better than if they tried to make the decision themselves. In other
words, Raz suggests that solving collective action problems legitimates authority. From
this follows two important conclusions: that de facto authority is not necessarily legit-
imate (an institution must provide a good service to be legitimate) and that legitimacy
is not the result of consent (as in the model of de jure authority) but of the service the
institution renders.14
The Razian account’s rational explanation of authority differs in fundamental ways
from our framework. Our objective is not to imagine—or to rationally reconstruct—
what (may) make constituencies accept an institution’s authority, but rather to assess how
audiences respond to the institution’s activities and outputs—in our case, the rulings of
ICs. In our account, de facto authority exists when an IC induces certain behaviors; so
long as IC rulings are recognized as binding and trigger actions that push toward giving
effect to those rulings, those behaviors do not depend on how the court gained or exer-
cises its right to rule in the first instance. Nor is it relevant whether constituencies argu-
ably benefit from the service provided by the institution in a moral philosophical sense.
The normative approaches summarized above share the idea that certain qualitative
characteristics of an international institution, ranging from its origins and procedures
to its actions, legitimate that institution.15 This fuses the concepts of authority and
10
In Part III of this book, Ingo Venzke articulates a critique of our framework based on some of
these findings. See also Patrick Capps & Henrik Palmer Olsen, Legal Authority Beyond the
State (2018).
11
See, e.g., Antonio Cassese, The Legitimacy of International Criminal Tribunals and the Current
Prospects of International Criminal Justice, 25 Leiden J. Int’ L. 491 (2012).
12
See the debate on this question summarized in Brandeis Institute for International Judges
in Collaboration with iCourts—Centre of Excellence for International Courts, The
Authority of International Courts and Tribunals: Challenges and Prospects (Leigh Swigart
ed., 2017).
13
Joseph Raz, The Authority of Law: Essays on Law and Morality (2009).
14
David Dyzenhaus, Consent, Legitimacy and the Foundation of Political and Legal Authority, in
Between Consenting Peoples: Political Communities and the Meaning of Consent (Jeremy
Webber & Colin M. Macleod eds., 2010). Andreas Føllesdal’s commentary applies the Razian model
to the authority framework. We respond to his critique in the introduction to Part III of the book.
15
There is a well-developed debate in the Global Administrative Law literature on these and re-
lated issues. See, e.g., Benedict Kingsbury, Nico Krisch & Richard B. Stewart, The Emergence of Global
Administrative Law, 68 Law & Contemp. Probs. 15 (2005).
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