AbstractNumerous governments have responded to the COVID-19 pandemic by declaring states of emergency and restricting individual liberties protected by international law. However, many more states have adopted emergency measures than have formally derogated from human rights conventions. This Editorial Comment critically evaluates the existing system of human rights treaty derogations. It analyzes the system's problems, identifies recent developments that have exacerbated these problems, and proposes a range of reforms in five areas—embeddedness, engagement, information, timing, and scope.
Abstract Over the last decade, scholars have debated whether the shifting landscape of individual rights protection in Europe has influenced the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). In our article, 'Walking Back Human Rights in Europe?', we analysed every minority opinion of the ECtHR Grand Chamber between 1998 and 2018. We found a substantial increase in what we labelled as 'walking back dissents' – minority opinions asserting that the Grand Chamber has overturned prior case law or settled doctrine in a way that favours the government. In their Reply, Stone Sweet, Sandholtz and Andenas (SSA) offer two principal critiques. First, they assert that they could not 'replicate' our coding. Second, SSA challenge our claim that legal and political developments in Europe have incentivized the ECtHR to move in a rights-restrictive direction. These claims are inaccurate and mischaracterize our article. First, SSA do not 'replicate' our study. Instead, they code a very small subset of judgments using more restrictive, subjective and vague criteria – which, unsurprisingly, yield fewer walking back dissents. Second, SSA narrowly focus on the Brighton and Copenhagen conferences, ignoring numerous other changes at the national and regional level that have created a more constrained environment for the ECtHR.
Abstract Judges and scholars have long debated whether the European Court of Human Rights (the ECtHR or the Court) can only expand, never diminish, human rights protections in Europe. Recent studies have found that political backlashes and national-level restrictions have influenced ECtHR case law. However, analysing whether the ECtHR is shifting in a regressive direction faces an empirical challenge: How can we observe whether the Court is limiting rights over time if it has never expressly overturned a prior judgment in a way that favours the government? We gain traction on this question by analysing all separate and minority opinions of the ECtHR Grand Chamber between 1998 and 2018. We focus on opinions asserting that the Grand Chamber has tacitly overturned prior rulings or settled doctrine in a way that favours the respondent state, which we label as 'walking back dissents'. We find that walking back dissents have become significantly more common in the last decade, revealing that some members of the ECtHR themselves believe that the Grand Chamber is increasingly overturning prior judgments in a regressive direction.
AbstractThis introduction provides an overview of thirteen essays selected in response to a worldwide call for papers for an Agora on "The International Legal Order and the Global Pandemic." The essays in the Agora consider some of the most pressing challenges, as well as potential opportunities, that COVID-19 is creating for the international legal order. The specific topics addressed include the role of international organizations such as the World Health Organization, state responsibility, human rights, financial regulation, and international trade. Contributors were invited to address the theme from a historical, institutional, doctrinal, normative, critical, or geopolitical perspective, or a mix of perspectives.
An innovative, interdisciplinary and far-reaching examination of the actual reality of international courts, International Court Authority challenges fundamental preconceptions about when, why, and how international courts become important and authoritative actors in national, regional, and international politics. A stellar group of scholars investigate the challenges that international courts face in transforming the formal legal authority conferred by states into an actual authority in fact that is respected by potential litigants, national actors, legal communities, and publics. Alter, Helfer, and Madsen provide a novel framework for conceptualizing international court authority that focuses on the reactions and practices of these key audiences. Eighteen scholars from the disciplines of law, political science and sociology apply this framework to study thirteen international courts operating in Africa, Latin America, and Europe, as well as on a global level. Together the contributors document and explore important and interesting variations in whether the audiences that interact with international courts around the world embrace or reject the rulings of these judicial institutions. Alter, Helfer, and Madsen's authority framework recognizes that international judges can and often do everything they 'should' do to ensure that their rulings possess the gravitas and stature that national courts enjoy. Yet even when imbued with these characteristics, the parties to the dispute, potential future litigants, and the broader set of actors that monitor and respond to the court's activities may fail to acknowledge the rulings as binding or take meaningful steps to modify their behaviour in response to them. For both specific judicial institutions, and more generally, the book documents and explains why most international courts possess de facto authority that is partial, variable, and highly dependent on a range of different audiences and contexts - and thus is highly fragile.
AbstractThis article introduces a Thematic Section and theorizes the multiple ways that judicializing international relations shifts power away from national executives and legislatures toward litigants, judges, arbitrators, and other nonstate decision-makers. We identify two preconditions for judicialization to occur—(1) delegation to an adjudicatory body charged with applying designated legal rules, and (2) legal rights-claiming by actors who bring—or threaten to bring—a complaint to one or more of these bodies. We classify the adjudicatory bodies that do and do not contribute to judicializing international relations, including but not limited to international courts. We then explain how rights-claiming initiates a process for authoritatively determining past violations of the law, identifying remedies for those violations, and preventing future violations. Because judicializing international relations occurs in multiple phases, in multiple locations, and involves multiple actors as decision-makers, governments often do not control the timing, nature, or extent to which political and policy decisions are adjudicated. Delegation—and the associated choice of institutional design features—is thus only the first step in a chain of processes that determine how a diverse array of nonstate actors influence politically consequential decisions.
