2006 José E Alvarez - International Organization - Then and Now
2006 José E Alvarez - International Organization - Then and Now
2006 José E Alvarez - International Organization - Then and Now
100, No. 2 (Apr., 2006), pp. 324-347 Published by: American Society of International Law Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3651150 . Accessed: 16/02/2011 11:20
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INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS: THEN AND Now ByJos E. Alvarez* International organizations (or IOs)-intergovernmental entities established by treaty, usually composed of permanent secretariats,plenary assemblies involving all member states, and executive organs with more limited participation-are a twentieth-century phenomenon having little in common with earlierforms of institutionalized cooperation, including those in the ancient world.1 The story of how, shortly after the turn of the last century, the Euro-American lawyers that dominated the field of international law sought to transcend the chaos of war by "moving to institutions" has been told elsewhere and needs no repeating here. David Kennedy, Martti Koskenniemi, and David Bederman, among others, have described the disparate individuals, separated by nationality, juridical philosophy, and competing "idealist"/"realist" schools of thought, who nevertheless shared a messianic, quasi-religious, and coherent "internationalist sensibility" that sought to institutionalize multilateral diplomacy with a view to promoting civilization and progress.2Kennedy locates the move to international organization in turn-of-the-century reformist aspirations for parliamentary, administrative, and judicial mechanisms that, in the Victorian language of the day, would convert "passion into reason."3 By the time thisJournalwas established, the Congress of Vienna's concert system had provided a model for an incipient (albeit only periodic) pseudo-parliament; diverse public administrative unions and river commissions suggested the possibilities for international administration and even the interstate pooling of funds; and the Permanent Court of Arbitration presaged an international judiciary.4 The decisive move to institutionalize what heretofore had been only fitful attempts to codify discrete areasof international law, jointly administer the global commons (such as with respect to certain rivers and postal services), and peacefully settle interstate disputes, came, of course, in 1919, when the Covenant establishing the League of Nations was concluded. This was the break with prior practice that transformed ad hoc practice into more integrated institutions.
* Of the Board of Editors.
1 See,e.g.,A.E. R. Boak,GreekInterstateAssociationsandtheLeague ofNations,15 AJIL375 (1921);seealsoJosiah OF GreekTimes,in THELAW WAR(MichaelHowardet al. eds., 1994) (discussing, Ober, Classical amongother of of the an League, organization Greekpeoplesthatregulated affairs Delphi);SteveShepthings,theAmphictyonic and in War,43 Peloponnesian pard, TheLawsof Warin thePre-DawnLight:Institutions Obligations Thucydides' L. COLUM. TRANSNAT'L 905 (2005) (semble).But Boak,who pointsout thatthe Greekleagues"were J. only creof atedand held togetherunderthe leadership one statemorepowerfulthan the rest,"concludeshis articlewith a powerful prescientquery:he wonderswhetherthe nascentLeagueof Nations would fail for lackof a comparably stateor groupof statescapableof coerciveenforcement.Boak,supra,at 383.
2 See,
L. 8 841 (1987); NATIONAL 1870-1960 (2002); DavidKennedy,TheMovetoInstitutions, CARDOZO REV. LAW, in a DavidJ. Bederman, Law,100 AJIL20 Journalof International ofScholarship theAmerican Appraising Century in International & Finnemore,ThePowerofLiberal (2006);seealsoMichaelBarnett Martha Organizations, POWER the IN GLOBAL GOVERNANCE 163-71 (MichaelBarnett& RaymondDuvall eds., 2005) (describing pre161, and liberalism IO thinkingin scholarly policy circles). dominating vailing 3 Kennedy,supranote 2, at 848, 859.
4
INSTITUTIONS1-9 (4th ed. 1982). Id. at 858; see also D. W. BOWETT,THE LAWOF INTERNATIONAL
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of receivedconsidThe establishment the Leagueof Nations-a subjectthat understandably erableattentionin thisJournal-sought to makepermanentthe formsof great-power cooptermsand erationfirstseenin the courseof WorldWarI. It alsosoughtto change,in rhetorical in fact, the wagingof warinto the discourseof "disputeresolution."5 As is clearfromPresident Wilson'saddress-published in theJournal-when he presented the draftLeagueCovenantat a Parisconferenceon February 1919, those who built the 14, of dilemmas: how bestto deploylawin the service peace, manycontemporary League presaged in a bodyrepresenting "great the of the peohow to further"democratic" body representation
ples of the world," how to construct a constitutive instrument that would also be a "vehicle of
in how life"suitedto "changing relations, circumstances," to ensuretransparency international To of the world."6 a conhow best to promotethe developmentof the "helpless and peoples of siderable extent, the post-World War II establishment the United Nations and Bretton Woods systemswas only a continuation,with midcoursecorrectionsand embellishments financeandeconomy),of the to of institutions address (suchascreating problems international The the of community."7 (interrupted) hope to institutionalize aspirations the "international as twentiethcentury's"moveto institutions," Kennedydescribes constituteda move from it, to that utopianaspirations institutionalaccomplishment; is, a move to replaceempirewith of that institutions wouldpromotethe economicdevelopment the colonized,endwarthrough international settlement,affirmhumanrightsand other"community" dispute goalsthrough at advance"democratic" levels, discourse, governance both the nationaland the international international and codify and progressively develop, on the basis of "scientificprinciples," for rules-all by turningto the construction rules,mechanisms administrative ofproceduralist and forumsfor institutionalized settlement.8 dispute regulation, in of of Despitethe collapse the League Nations,andrevolutionary changes foreignrelations and technology,public international lawyershave today largelyachievedtheir century-old over The dreamto institutionalize. nearlythreehundredIOs-regional andglobal,presiding "technocratic" matters-and nearly issuesof warandpeaceandmoreprosaic bothhigh-profile international virtuallyeveryfield of forty institutionalized disputesettlersthat now address once regarded exclusively matters as humanendeavor, subjectto nationallaw,reflect including faithin technocratic legalelites,neutralformsof adjudication and modeledon theselawyers' and the independent of states,Westernmodelsof governance freemarjudiciary rule-of-law of needsasthe drivers international kets,andfunctionalist cooperation.9 Althoughtoday'sIOs
5 Kennedy, supra note 2, at 849, 866. Despite the U.S. decision not to participate, theJournal closely followed subsequent League developments. See, e.g., Charles Noble Gregory, The FirstAssemblyof the League ofNations, 15 AJIL 240 (1921). 6 See Current Note, The League of Nations, 13 AJIL 570, 572-75 (1919). President Wilson's address was particularly prescient given current concerns over the "democratic deficits" of IOs, see infra at notes 99-107 and corresponding text. He noted that since it is "impossible to conceive a method or an assembly so large and various as to be really representative of the great body of the peoples of the world," the best alternative was to have each government be represented by two or three representatives, though only a single vote, so that a number of voices would speak from time to time for each government. Id. at 572. 7 For a backward-looking view of the UN Charter as correcting the perceived flaws of the League of Nations Covenant, see BOWETT,supra note 4, at 17-22. For discussion of the turn to institutions in the international economic area, see, for example, the centennial essays by John H. Jackson, InternationalEconomic Law-A Growing, Powerful Sub-Subjectof nternationalLaw, 100 AJIL, and Detlev F. Vagts, InternationalEconomicLaw and theAmerican Society ofInternational Law, 100 AJIL (both forthcoming July 2006). 8 Kennedy, supra note 2, at 984-85. 9 For INTERNATIONAL INSTI& descriptions of existing IOs, see HENRYG. SCHERMERS NIELSM. BLOKKER, LAW:UNITYWITHIN DIVERSITY SANDS& PIERRE TUTIONAL KLEIN,BOWETT'S (4th rev. ed. 2003); PHILIPPE LAWOF INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTIONS (5th ed. 2001). Note that a substantial proportion of new IOs are today created not by governments but by other IOs and that traditional IOs created by treaty declined from 394 in 1982
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differ in relation to many variables-from degree of legalization10to measurable real-world '-1they arethe unmistakable progeny of the "Grotian tradition" memorably described impact Hersch Lauterpacht in 1946.12 The UN and Bretton Woods organizations, and other IOs by that aspireto global participation, such as the World Trade Organization (WTO), institutionalize Lauterpacht'seleven featuresof the "Grotian tradition."They attempt to subject the totality of international relations to the rule oflaw; inspire conceptions of a new form ofjusgentium; affirm the social nature of humankind; recognize that individual human beings (and not just states) are of direct concern to international law; seek to subject all states, including the most powerful, to the rule of law; reject the idea that the decision to wage a "just war" is ultimately the "supremeprerogative"of individual states;subject the privilege of remaining neutral to IO Council) exception; rely on the binding force of treatypromises; affirm the foun(e.g., Security dational rights and freedoms of the individual; erron the side of pacifism; and reflect a tradition of "idealism and progress."13 In largeand small ways, IOs have accomplished more than their creatorsanticipated. As this Journal's other centennial essays begin to suggest, they have transformed the sources of international obligations as well as their content, the principal lawmaking actors, and even our understanding of what "international law" is and what it means to "comply" with its rules.14
I. IOs AND THE RULES OF INTERNATIONALLAW
Dinah Shelton's examination of "normative hierarchy" suggests some of the changes in modern sources of international obligation that are at least partly attributable to institutionalization. and ergaomnesobligations areproducts of the age ofIOs precisely because 15Jus cogens they made real (or more real than ever before) the idea of a "community of states as a whole" on which such hierarchicalconcepts could be built. The articulation ofjus cogens-in Article 53 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties16-resulted from the kind of "package deal"thatcharacterizes treatymakingin institutionalizedglobalvenues involvingUN expertbodies this instance, the InternationalLaw Commission [ILC]) and UN-authorized treaty-making (in
to 339 in 1992, while "emanations" from other IOs increased from 669 to 808. Eric Stein, InternationalIntegration andDemocracy: No LoveatFirstSight, 95 AJIL489,489 -90 n.2 (2001). For a listing of international dispute settlers, see Project on International Courts and Tribunals, Synoptic Chart: The International Judiciary in Context (Nov. 2004), at <http://www.pict-pcti.org>. 10 For one attempt to measure the "degree"of legalization, see Kenneth W. Abbott, RobertO. Keohane, Andrew Moravcsik, Anne-Marie Slaughter, & Duncan Snidal, The Concept of Legalization, 54 INT'L ORG. 401 (2000) (measuring legalization in accordance with three variables: obligation, precision, and delegation).
J. INT'L L. 323 (2000) (empirical analysis of relatively high levels of compliance with certain rules of the International Monetary Fund), with Oona Hathaway, Do Human Rights TreatiesMake a Difference? 111 YALEL.J. 1935 (2002) (empirical analysis of relatively low levels of compliance with institutionalized human rights regimes). For a survey of contemporary approaches to compliance, many of which consider the relevancy of institutional factors, see generally Kal Raustiala & Anne-Marie Slaughter, International Law, International Relationsand Compliance, in RELATIONS (Walter Calnaes, Thomas Risse, & Beth Simmons eds., 2002). HANDBOOKOF INTERNATIONAL 538 Work on the institutionalization of compliance has often been grounded in drawing from or contrasting the experiences of the European Union, see, e.g., Jeffrey T. Checkel, Why Comply?Social Learning and European Identity Change, 55 INT'L ORG. 553 (2001), and especially that regime's reliance on judicialized lawmaking, seegenerally AND JUDICIALIZATION MARTIN SHAPIRO& ALECSTONE SWEET,ON LAW, POLITICS, (2002). 12 in Hersch Lauterpacht, The GrotianTradition International Law, 1946 BRIT. Y.B. INT'L L. 1.
13 Id. at 19-51.
INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS AS book-length treatment of this thesis, see JOSE E. ALVAREZ, LAW-MAKERS (2005). 15 Dinah Shelton, Normative Hierarchy in International Law, 100 AJIL 291 (2006). 16 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, May 23, 1969, Art. 53, 1155 UNTS 331.
14For a
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conferences;that is, it placated,as Shelton indicates,the Soviet bloc and newly independent states, and was part of a single packagethat stabilizedtreatyrelationsthrough codification, as sought by the West, in exchangefor softeningthe rigorof some preexistingrules,assought by others.17 Article 53 is also the kind of compromisedprovisionthat sometimes emergesfrom globalIO venues when negotiatorswith fundamentallyinconsistent desires find themselves under pressureto produce some tangibleproductwithin a preestablished time frame.18 Littlewonder that, as vaguelydefined in Article 53 (or since),jus cogens remainsa "concept in evolution."'9It was also predictablethat, as Shelton suggests, cogens ergaomnesobligationswould be more likely to be cited by IOs, and jus such as UN human rightstreatybodies, the ILC, and the InternationalCourt ofJustice (ICJ),than by states.One would expectsuch concepts,evocativeof community interestsand inspiredbyArticle 2(6) of the UN Charter,to be principallycited by that community's ostensible representatives. Indeed, the premiseof hierarchically superiornorms assumesthat the will of all should prevailover the renegade"other." the samepremisethat underliesArticle 103 of the Charter,which posThis is its that some community rules (and its principalinstitutional representative, namely the United Nations itself) are superiorto others by dint of the claims of the United Nations to universalparticipation and its pursuit of universallydesiredgoals.20 The turn to these hierarchicalnorms also stems from the proliferation of international rules produced in the age of IOs. When an IO, such as the International Labour Organization (ILO), becomes such an effective treatymachine that states can no longer keep up with their respective reporting obligations, it is natural that the organization itself would need to enunciate the "core"obligations expected of all members, even though no such setting of priorities is explicitly authorized by its constitutive instrument or the underlying labor conventions.21 Much of the impetus for attempting to elevate certain treatyobligations over others emerges as well from
17 LAWIN A DIVIDEDWORLD 176-77 (1986) (describing INTERNATIONAL SeegenerallyANTONIOCASSESE, the evolution of the rules in the Vienna Convention). The term "package deal" may mean either provisions of a treaty negotiated, on the basis of consensus, that appeal to different groups of states, or treaty provisions subject to an express limitation on reservations or severability designed to prevent the dismantling of the "package"at the time of ratification. See Hugo Caminos & Michael R. Molitor, Progressive Development ofInternationalLaw andthe Package Deal, 79 AJIL 871 (1985). According to Cassese's description of the negotiating dynamics of the Vienna Convention, the insertion ofjus cogensappears to fit both descriptions of a "packagedeal," at least to some degree, since the concept was favored by developing countries especially and its inclusion seems to have played a role in securing their acceptance of a package that did not include some of their other preferred "progressive"changes. In addition, although the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties does not prohibit reservations, the terms of Article 53 (barring any derogation from a "peremptory norm") attempt to achieve the second purpose of some "package deals," at least with respect to jus cogens. 18 AND PROCESS INTEROF CompareBruno Simma, Consent:Strains in the TreatySystem,in THE STRUCTURE NATIONAL LAW487, 494 (Ronald St. J. Macdonald & Douglas M. Johnston eds., 1983) (contending that when IO forums produce a treaty, the "lowest common denominator" provisions deemed necessary to facilitate its conclusion in global venues, or to encourage the widespread ratification that is often regarded as the indicator of success, may devalue the entire exercise). 19 Shelton, supra note 15, at 301 n.63 (citing commentary at 1986 UN conference). 20 An abundant literature derives from this premise that the UN Charter constitutes a kind of "constitution" for DE ORDER (2005); Blaine Sloan, The the world. See, e.g., ERIKA WET, THE INTERNATIONAL CONSTITUTIONAL UnitedNations Charteras a Constitution, 1989 PACEY.B. INT'LL. 61; N. White, The UnitedNations System:Conference, Contract, or Constitutional Order?4 SING. J. INT'L & COMP. L. 281 (2000). 21 See Fundamental ILO Conventions, at <http://www.ilo.org/public/english/standards/norm/whatare/ fundam/index.htm> (last modified Oct. 20, 2000). This is not the ILO's sole attempt to suggest a hierarchywithin international labor law. The ILO's Constitution has also been read to imply members' commitment to certain "core"obligations, such as the right to form labor unions, and to include a sub silentio commitment to respond to L. ORGANIZATIONS JR., INTERNATIONAL complaints alleging the violation of such rights. See FREDERIC KIRGIS IN THEIR LEGAL SETTING413-25 (2d ed. 1993). As Shelton suggests, other IOs have done the same. Shelton, supra note 15, at 314-15 (discussing hierarchically superior norms, as found by the Human Rights Committee under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights).
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the sheer proliferation ofIOs, the fact that most of them have engaged in various forms of"mission creep,"and the consequent need for IOs to work out problems at the "joints"between their respective "regimecomplexes."22One way to resolve IO turf battles or boundary issues that can no longer be easily resolved through the mechanical application of the rules applicable to successive treaties is to suggest normative hierarchies-as between, for example, the WTO's trade rules, the ILO's labor norms, and quasi-institutionalized environmental regimes. As IOs, whether prompted by the functionalist needs of their members or the desires of their bureaucrats,expand their original mandates, their normative reachesextend beyond what their creators had anticipated, generating yet more regulatory imperatives to resolve the resulting potential conflicts. Thus, the expanding range of institutionalized human rights regimes, which now address a dense set of individual and group rights in political, economic, cultural, and social domains, inevitably intrudes into the expanding missions of the World Bank (an institution that in turn no longer sees itself as confined to the financing of infrastructure projects) or the International Monetary Fund (IMF) (now no longer confined to maintaining states' fidelity to fixed exchange rates).23The predictable outcome is, first, a growing de facto acceptance of teleological interpretation of IO charters, permitting the expansion of IO mandates and making it possible for IOs to respond to them creatively,24and second, innovative regulatory phenomena as varied as World Bank operational policies relating to the treatment of indigenous peoples and IMF structural adjustment conditions intended to advance an alleged human right entitlement to "democratic governance."25 The turn to various forms of"soft law," also addressed by Shelton, is in no small part attributable to IOs.26 Given the lack of staredecisisin the international system, perhaps the largest
22 Genetic 58 See,e.g.,Kal Raustiala & David G. Victor, TheRegime Resources, INT'LORG. 277, ComplexforPlant 279-80 (2004) (describing the consequences of the rising density of international institutions as "regime complexes" consisting of partially overlapping rules evincing path dependence, forum shopping, norms to handle issues at the "joints" between regimes, and delegations of authority to various interpreters or enforcers). For descriptions ofvarious forms of"mission creep" among IOs and its consequences on relationships between IOs, see, for example, THE UN SECURITY COUNCIL:FROMTHE COLD WAR TO THE 21ST CENTURY1-115 (David M. Malone ed., AFF., Sept/Oct. 2001, at 22; Andre Newburg, 2004); Jessica Einhorn, The WorldBank'sMission Creep,FOREIGN
ETARY FORTHENEW MILLENNIUM (Mario Giovanoli ed., 2000); Paul C. Szasz, The WorldBank 81 LAW:ISSUES AMICORUMIBRAHIM I. SHIHATA793 (Sabine Schlemmer-Schulte & Ko-yung Tung F. and Tobacco,in LIBER
THE WTO ASAN INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION (Anne O. Krueger ed., 1998). Seegenerally Symposium: 59 23 LIGHTAND SHADOW:THE WORLD BANK,THE INTERNATIONAL SeegenerallyMAC DARROW,BETWEEN MONETARY HUMAN RIGHTSLAW (2003). FUND AND INTERNATIONAL 24 For a discussion of how the interpretation of 10 charters has been "constitutionalized" through teleological interpretation, see ALVAREZ, supra note 14, at 65-108. See, e.g., Hannes L. Schloemann & Stefan Ohlhoff, "Con(1999) ("Constitutional structures are developing much faster in international trade law than in any other area of international law. . ."). For a thoughtful review and critique of such views with respect to the WTO, see DEBORAH Z. CASS,THE CONSTITUTIONALIZATION THE WORLD TRADE ORGANIZATION OF (2005). 25 See RONALDCHARLES 101-10 (2004); David F. Fidler, A Kinder, WOLF, TRADE,AID, AND ARBITRATE alized Civilization, 35 TEX. INT'L L.J. 387 (2000); Benedict Kingsbury, Operational Policies oflnternationalInsti-
to and in eds., 2001); DavidVines, TheWTOin Relation theFundand theBank:Competencies, Agendas, Linkages, TheBoundaries the WTO,96 AJIL1 (2002). of
TIONAL LAW 323 (Guy S. Goodwin-Gill & Stefan Talmon eds., 1999); see also Daniel Kalderimis, IMF
BankandIndigenous in OF tutions Partof theLaw-making as Process: World The Peoples, THEREALITY INTERNAA STUD.103 (2004). as 13 Conditionality Investment Regulation: TheoreticalAnalysis, SOC.& LEGAL
26 Christine Chinkin has enumerated six definitions of "soft" law; namely, norms that (1) have been articulated in nonbinding form; (2) contain vague or imprecise terms; (3) emanate from bodies lacking international lawmaking authority; (4) are directed at nonstate actors whose practice cannot constitute custom; (5) lack any corresponding theory of responsibility; and (6) are based solely upon voluntary adherence. Christine Chinkin, Normative AND COMPLIANCE: THE ROLEOF NON-BINDDevelopment in the International Legal System,in COMMITMENT ING NORMS IN THE INTERNATIONAL SYSTEM 30 (Dinah Shelton ed., 2000). LEGAL 21,
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numbersof judgmentsissuedby varbodyof emerging"softlaw"todayis the ever-increasing courtsand tribunals, well as the myriadcommentsandviews as international ious permanent humanrightstreatybodiesandofficialssuchasthe UN specialrapissuedby institutionalized or on Thesejudicialized, at leastreasoned, opinions,someformally binding porteur torture.27 constituteattemptsat treatyor cus(but only on partiesto them) and manypurelyadvisory, that-as can be saidof the opinionsissuedby the WTO Appellate tomarylaw interpretation the ICJ,andthe adhoc warcrimestribunals-are influential and, in anycase, generally Body, aretreated quasi-binding as by precedents the bodiesissuingthem.Forthisreason,irrespective of thesemanifestations soft law cannotbe of theirformallynonbindingstatuson nonparties, sourceof international at theveryleast,forma subsidiary and, lawyers ignoredby international as much as any "judicial opinion"identifiedin Article38 of the ICJ'sStatute.The obligation and codesof conduct,conference samemightbe saidof manyresolutions, declarations, similar evenwhen not cited by govproductsofIOs, some of which arementionedby Shelton,that, ernmentsas binding authority,are frequentlydeployedby other actors-nongovernmental secretariats-in lobbyand (NGOs), multinational corporations, international organizations in of ing, settlingdisputes,or assisting the interpretation bindinglaw,both nationalandinterto national.As Sheltonsuggests,recourse such instruments, thoughbemoanedby traditional is characteristic otherinstitutions-from those of the adminof like Prosper Weil, positivists to istrative stateto the moderncorporation-that alsodevelopinformalmechanisms enforce socialnormsin permanent iterative settingsinvolvingrepeatplayers. havebeenaccompanied IO-induced in The changes the formsof international by obligation mostclosely with normative associated in principles Manyof thesubstantive changes theircontent. the to coopto law modern international owetheirexistence IOs. Consider ostensible "duty public lawunilateral or erate" to negotiate action,ascitedbyEuropean multilaterally to undertaking prior or to U.S. attempts forgomanymultilateral of by regimes, asdeployed theWTO yerscritical recent or in the Shrimp/Turtle case.28 Whether not sucha dutyexistsgenerally within or Body Appellate on of environmental it is premised the existence regcertain suchas tradeor protection, regimes to that the forums concretize broader ularized "community" whichthe duty (usually permanent) law such familiar orcustomary concepts, as"common The can isowed.29 same besaidofother treaty
and but differentiatedresponsibilities" "dutiesto warn"or "to consult."30
international Manyotherchangesin contemporary legalprocess-the waysmoderntreaties This should to and rulesof custom ariseor die-are also attributable institutionalization. treatiesarethe productof institusince the majorityof today'smultilateral scarcely surprise conferences authorized IOs withIO-dicvenues.They resultfromtreaty-making tionalized by as tated time framesand locales;are basedon prior considerationby designated"experts" committeessuchas aviationlaw the as diverse thosewithin UNCITRAL, ILC,and technocratic
generallyALVAREZ, supra note 14, at 458-520, 545-66. See, e.g., CASSESE, supra note 17, at 185 (contending that the "duty to cooperate" emerges naturally from the universal participation of states in modern lawmaking settings since it makes negotiations between diverse and often conflicting groups of states possible); Pierre-Marie Dupuy, The Place and Role of Unilateralism in Contemporary International Law, 11 EUR. J. INT'L L. 19, 22-25 (2000) (arguing that the "law of coexistence" brought about by the UN system is the "basisfor the whole post-war international legal order" and requires states to "choose the path of compromise and negotiated settlement"). 29 See, e.g., Bruno Simma & Andreas L. Paulus, The 'International Community':Facing the Challenge ofGlobalization, 9 EUR. J. INT'L L. 266, 266 (1998) (claiming that the Lotus principle "is giving way to a more communitarian, more highly institutionalized international law, in which states 'channel' the pursuit of most of their individual interests through multilateral institutions"). 30 See FREDERIC KIRGIS PRIORCONSULTATION INTERNATIONAL LAW:A STUDYOF STATEPRACIN L. JR., in TICE (1983); ChristopherD. Stone, CommonbutDifferentiatedResponsibilities InternationalLaw,98 AJIL276 (2004).
28
27 See
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specialists within the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO); emerge from managerial forms of treaty making such as framework conventions elaborated by later protocols conferencesof the parties(COPs) or meetings of the parties negotiated in quasi-institutionalized or rely on institutionalizedreportingobligations that apply even prior to ratificationor (MOPs); that requirea stateto "optout" to avoidbeing bound.31These innovationshavesubvertedthe principle of stateconsent as legitimatingnorm, and transformedthe negotiatingdynamicsaswell as the IO specificoutcomes of multilateraltreatynegotiations.32 venues have generallymade it easierto the conclude the ambitious multilateraltreatiesthat characterize modern era-treaties that both to and sometimes requirenearlyuniversalparticipationto achievetheirgrandiosegoals (such aspire of as to establishruleson the areasof the globalcommons, the interpretation treaties,or the conduct of diplomatic relations).It is also to be expected that treatiesthat are themselves the outcome of modern institutionalized venues, unlike nineteenth-centuryinterstatecompacts,would sometimes establishyet more institutionalizedforms of cooperation (such as the permanent International CriminalCourt) that in turn relyon models (e.g., SecurityCouncil-generated ad hoc war crimes tribunals)or institutions (e.g., the SecurityCouncil or an "independentcivil service")that are the unique progeny of the age ofIOs. Political scientists and economists further explain the success of such ambitious treaty ventures as the result of IO-derived path dependencies, increased access to or a lowering of costs with respect to information, reductions in transaction costs or the risks of free riders, and enhanced opportunities for the pooling of assets, expertise, issue linkage, and package deals.33 Less abstractly, IO negotiating venues simply make it easier to conclude treaties that involve ever-largernumbers of states because they make it unnecessary to revisit basic rules of procedure or voting, permit reliance on "independent" secretariatsfor compromise formulations or final clauses (as with respect to entry into force or reservations), and provide a neutral central registry for ratifications and reservations.34 But IOs do not just explain treaty successes; they also explain many contemporary treaty failures. Choosing between IO negotiating forums-part of a broader "forum shifting" phenomenon-is now a crucial strategicchoice. Powerful states may choose to advance their interests through the shrewd sequential selection of negotiating forums-as the United States did regardingthe regulation of corruption, by first negotiating bilaterally, later going to a regional organization sympathetic to its views (the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development), and only thereafter moving to more globally representative institutions such
31 See generally ALVAREZ, supra note 14, at 273-337; Paul C. Szasz, General Law-making Processes,in THE LAW27 (Christopher C. Joyner ed., 1997); Frederic L. Kirgis Jr., SpeUNITED NATIONSAND INTERNATIONAL cialized Law-making Processes,in id. at 65. 32 International organizations' deployment of their implied powers and reliance on the principle of effectiveness have contributed to postmodern doubts about relying on state consent as the basis for all international obligations. FROM APOLOGYTO UTOPIA: THE STRUCTUREOF INTERNATIONAL See generally MARTTI KOSKENNIEMI, ARGUMENT270-91 (1989). LEGAL 33 There is a large literature on how IOs are formed by states to overcome collective problems, produce Paretoimproving outcomes, and enable efficient solutions to contracting problems, incomplete information, and other market imperfections. See, e.g., ALVAREZ, supra note 14, at 338-65; Kenneth W. Abbott & Duncan Snidal, Why StatesAct ThroughFormalInternational Organizations, 42 J. CONFLICTRESOL.3 (1998); William J. Aceves, Institutionalist Theoryand International Legal Scholarship, 12 AM. U. J. INT'L L. & POL'Y227, 242-56 (1997). 34 Seegenerally Roy S. Lee, Multilateral Treaty-makingand Negotiation Techniques:An Appraisal, in CONTEMOF LAW:ESSAYS HONOUR OF GEORGSCHWARZENBERGER HIS IN ON PORARY PROBLEMS INTERNATIONAL BIRTHDAY EIGHTIETH 157 (Bin Cheng & E. D. Brown eds., 1998). For a detailed look at the contribution of IOs AT to the procedural rules governing multilateral treaty making, see ROBBIESABEL,PROCEDURES INTERNAA AT AND ASSEMBLIES OF TIONALCONFERENCES: STUDY OF THE RULESOF PROCEDURE CONFERENCES INTERNATIONAL INTER-GOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATIONS (1997).
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as the WTO (and ultimately the General Assembly).35 On the other hand, choosing the "wrong"IO-such as one whose diverse membership makes reconciling incompatible interests and devising a package deal impossible-may prove disastrous. Indeed, it has been suggested that both strong and weak states have been known to play the forum-shifting game, either to encourage a favorableoutcome in a friendly venue or to undermine a regulatoryventure they do not favor.36For better or worse, the involvement ofIOs has demonstrably changed treaty making. But IOs have also changed the ways we determine whether "success"has been achieved. Imprecision in treaty terms is no longer a potentially fatal defect in effectiveness-not if it is the result of the negotiators' decision to have their treaty-contract be completed by others, whether through institutionalized adjudication (as in the WTO) or other forms of delegated interpretation, both formal and informal (as through recommendations issued by a plenary body such as the ILO Assembly, opinions issued by IO legal counsel, views rendered by expert bodies, or protocols approved by MOPs).37 For these reasons, the efficacy of multilateral treaties embedded in institutionalized regimes or entrusted to institutional interpreters can no longer be judged as through a single snapshot at an instant in time; such compacts are more akin to legislative enterpriseswhose progresscan best be measured as through a video recording over time. The complex (and evolving) regime that now applies to reservationsto multilateral treaties is also the child of IOs. The initial decision to sacrifice the integrity of multilateral treaties in favor of encouraging universalityof participation reflected a predictable ranking of goals by the General Assembly and its path-breaking Genocide Convention, together with the ICJ's advisory opinion of 1951 that interpreted the Convention. The relatively expeditious transformation of customary law that recognized this change from the preexisting regime (which required all treatypartiesto accept a proposed reservation)was made possible by other institutional entities; namely, the International Law Commission and the subsequent UN conference that produced the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties.38 Furthermore, IOs remain the principal venues for the continuing evolution of the rules regardingtreaty reservations.Thus, the effort to demarcate more restrictiverules for legitimate reservationsto human rights treaties, as well as certain states' attempts to resist such a change, are both taking place within an institutionalized forum-the Human Rights Committeemore than through intermittent diplomatic exchanges between discrete pairs of states. In addition, to resolve this dispute, the community of states is turning-with as yet uncertain results-to yet another institutional forum, the ILC, which has an ostensibly broader and less self-interested mandate than the Human Rights Committee.39 Another unique product of the age of IOs-the UN secretariat in charge of registering treaties- has become an agent of
35 Seegenerally Kenneth W. Abbott, Rule-Making in the WTO: Lessonsfromthe Case ofBribery and Corruption, 4 J. INT'LECON. L. 275 (2001); Laurence R. Heifer, RegimeShifting: The TRIPsAgreementand the New Dynamics J. oflnternational Intellectual PropertyLawmaking, 29 YALE INT'L L. 1 (2004). 36 See Heifer, supra note 35. 37 See, e.g., KIRGIS, supranote 21, at 426 -31 (describing role of International Labour Office in the interpretation oflabor conventions); Joel P. Trachtman, The Domain of WTO DisputeResolution, 40 HARV.INT'LL.J. 333 (1999) (describing the gap-filling function of WTO adjudicators). 38 See Reservations to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, Advisory Opinion, 1951 ICJ REP. 15 (May 28); Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, supra note 16, Arts. 20-21. For discussion of how the content of the Vienna Convention reflected the universal venue in which it was negotiated, see CASSESE, supra note 17, at 187-91. 39 Invalid Reservations, State Consent,96 AJIL 531 (2002). and Ryan Goodman, Human RightsTreaties, Seegenerally
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change; that office now appearsto be modifying the very nature of treatyreservationsby accepting reservations not proposed at the time of ratification unless other states object.40 Of course, treaties are not the only traditional source of international law that have been transformedby IOs. Customary law in the age ofIOs has been channeled away from historians consumed with surveying extensive state practice over decades or even centuries (as in The PaqueteHabana)41 to institutionalized shortcuts, including reliance on General Assembly resolutions, widely ratified multilateral treaties deemed to be expressions of "community" interests, and other institutionalized work products such as the ILC's draft rules on state responsibility and commentaries. This approach is as likely to be taken by national courts, as in Judge Kaufman's decision in the Filartiga case, as by scholars and international tribunals.42 The "new"customary international law is most often the product of the interaction of organs that claim communal legitimacy based on neutral status (e.g., IO political organs, IO secretariats, and international courts), expertise (e.g., IO expert bodies), or universalparticipation (e.g., IO plenary bodies).43 These rules differ from nineteenth-century forms of custom in the speed with which they form and evolve, the degree of participation claimed, and, often, the extent to which the rules substantively intrude on previously sacrosanct sovereign domains. While or many have praised this new kind of"supranational," "world,""declaratory," "universal"law as a new version ofjus gentium, others have pointed to the same phenomenon to suggest new reasonsto resist its domestic incorporation.44But neither the proponents of"new custom" nor its detractors deny the impact of the move to institutions.
II. IOS AND THE LAWMAKINGACTORS
Perhapsthe biggestchangein the evermore institutionalizedinternationallegalprocessconcerns its lawmakingactorsand subjects.IOs have "democratized" internationallawmakingat leastto the extent that they have encouragedthe participationof more states,not merely the "civilized" ones, aswell as nonstateactors,in the productionof internationalrules.Moreover,since, as noted, internationalobligationsareno longer limited to the formalsourcesof law listed in Article38 of the ICJ
40 Palitha T. B. Kohona,SomeNotableDevelopments thePractice the UN Secretary-GeneralDepositary in as of of and MultilateralTreaties: Reservations Declarations, AJIL433, 435-39 (2005). 99 41The PaqueteHabana,175 U.S. 677 (1900). 42 v. U.S. Restatement conservative 630 Filartiga Pefia-Irala, F.2d 876 (2d Cir. 1980). Thus, even the generally Lawrecognized possibilitythat some GeneralAssemblyresolutions Relations the could havean impact ofForeign
LAWOF THE UNITED STATES? 103 on customary law. RESTATEMENT (THIRD) OF THE FOREIGNRELATIONS
LAW THROUGH THE reserve" of states, see ROSALYNHIGGINS, THE DEVELOPMENT INTERNATIONAL OF
note 2 (1987). reporters' 43 Foran of earlyrecognition the impactof UN politicalorganson such fundamental conceptsas the "domaine
POLITICAL OF UNITED on ORGANS THE NATIONS look atjudges'reliance unratified treaties, (1963). Fora critical in seeW. MichaelReisman,Unratified Treaties OtherUnperfectedActs International and Law:Constitutional FuncL. tions,35 VAND.J. TRANSNAT'L 729 (2002). I. International 44 See,e.g.,Jonathan Charney,Universal Law,87 AJIL529 (1993); HiramE. Chodesh,Neither nor The L. International Law,26 TEX.J. INT'L 87 (1991);Jost Delbriick, Treaty Custom: Emergence ofDeclaratory 'World LEGAL Law'?9 IND.J. GLOBAL STUD.401 (2002);JohnW. Head, Supranational (Internal) Prospectsfora Is Law:How theMove Toward Multilateral the Solutions Changing Character International Law,42 U. KAN.L. of REV. (1994); BenedictKingsbury, Nico Krisch,& Richard Stewart,TheEmergence GlobalAdministrative B. 605 of & PROBS. (2005); seealsoBenedictKingsbury, and 9 15 Law, 68 LAW CONTEMP. Sovereignty Inequality, EUR. L. of the law"through"mimesis, worldculture,or regor J. INT'L 599, 611 (1998) (describing emergence "world cost").But seeCurtisA. ulatorycompetition-from which most statesarenot freeto departexceptat intolerable & A InternationalLaw Federal as Law: Critique Common Bradley JackL. Goldsmith,Customary oftheModernPosiL. thatthe qualitiesof the new formsof customary providerealaw 815 (1997) (contending tion, 110 HARV. REV. it sons for not according the statusof U.S. federallaw);CurtisA. Bradley& JackL. Goldsmith, TheCurrent Ille66 HumanRights L. gitimacyof International Litigation, FORDHAM REV.319 (1997) (semble).
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Statutebut embraceglobalformsof regulationthat more closelyapproximatethe law of the administrativestate, these obligationsinvolve in addition to states,as both lawmakingactorsandsubjects, IOs, individuals,NGOs, multinationalcorporations,and networksof regulatoryofficials.45 IOs aresurelypartof the reasonwhy, as Steve Charnovitz indicates, NGOs have joined states as instigators and enforcers of international law.46 It is no accident that the most prominent NGO roles in the international legal process as, for example, behind-the-scenes treaty drafters and promoters of such contemporary global treaties as the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Convention Against Torture, the Statute of the International Criminal Court, and the Ottawa convention banning land mines, or as agents of change, for instance, by backing the establishment of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, have involved IOs. The rise to international prominence of NGOs is necessarily the story of the symbiotic role of their erstwhile adversariesand abettors, the IOs, from the United Nations to the WTO, that have given them observeror consultative status, permitted them to opine as amici, or otherwise legitimized them (as by citing their reports). IOs have also empowered (or in some cases disempowered) other nonstate actors, including business associations, representativesof multilateralcorporations, and trade unions, by permitting or denying them access to the inner sanctum of IO lawmaking. IO lawmaking processes, such as those producing (and enforcing) the Codex Alimentarius, have helped to "privatize"the international legal process.47 The expansion of lawmaking actors and subjects is to be expected of institutions that are themselves a new kind of"international legal person" that, in the words of the ICJ, are neither equivalent nor superior to states, but, within the scope of their charters, can act as both lawmakers and law subjects.48Although some may prefer to describe them as merely "arenas"for lawmaking action, IOs-whether traditional or not-are for all practical purposes a new kind of lawmaking actor, to some degree autonomous from the states that establish them.49 IOs can now be seen not only as capable of concluding treaties with other international legal persons (other IOs or states) but as vehicles for the forms of regulation associated with the executive branches of government or national administrative agencies-and not just in technocratic fields of the law such as civil aviation and telecommunications; this aspect also bears on issues of "high politics," as through the fertile acts of improvisation that have transformed Chapters VI and VII of the UN Charter to permit the contracting out of the use of force, diverse types of multilateral sanctions, and peacekeeping/peace enforcement actions or determinations by
e.g., Kingsbury, Krisch, & Stewart, supra note 44. Steve Charnovitz, Nongovernmental Organizations and International Law, 100 AJIL 348 (2006) (centennial essay in this issue). 47 See REGULATORY REGIMES: CASE STUDIES IN HEALTH, generally DAVID M. LEIVE,INTERNATIONAL AND FOOD (1976); Naomi Roht-Arriaza, 'SoftLaw'in a 'Hybrid'Organization: TheInternational METEOROLOGY, AND COMPLIANCE, supra note 26, at 263. Note that even Organizationfor Standardization, in COMMITMENT some instruments not produced within IOs, such as the international standards of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and soft codes produced by some IOs, may come to be "hardened" (or enforced) through the actions of other IOs. See David A. Wirth, Commentary,in id. at 330, 338-41 (describing the use of ISO standards under the WTO's Agreement on Technical Barriersto Trade); see also ALVAREZ, supra note 14, at 217-35. 48 See Reparation for Injuries Suffered in the Service of the United Nations, Advisory Opinion, 1949 ICJ REP. 174 (Apr. 11) (finding that the attributes of the United Nations as an international legal person can be derived from a "principle of effectiveness" that implies the existence of certain powers even when these are not otherwise stated in its charter [such as the power to conclude treaties, nowhere mentioned in the UN Charter, or to bring an international claim for injuries], if these are necessary to enable that organization to fulfill its purposes). 49 But see Steve Charnovitz, The Relevance Non-State Actors to International Law, in DEVELOPMENTS OF of LAWIN TREATY MAKING543, 544 - 48 (Riidiger Wolfrum & Volker Riben eds., 2005) (arguINTERNATIONAL ing that the UN Security Council, NATO, the Financial Action Task Force, and the WTO "are not themselves actors, but rather are arenas for utilizing persuasion and applying power"; id. at 546).
46
45 See,
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the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) with respect to arms control.50As constructivists have shown, although IOs are intergovernmental in nature and rarely accept nonstate parties as members, their organs and the individuals working within them (from secretaries experts) are having an independent impact on international law. general to IO-designated be dismissed as the mere agents of their collective principals, namely their state 1Os cannot members.5' As Michael Barnett and Martha Finnemore point out, the "rational-legal"(or impersonal or technocratic) characterof many IOs accords them a share of autonomy that can shape the behavior of others, including states.52While members of 1O secretariats,like most international judges or arbitrators,are usually self-effacing when it comes to acknowledging their own authority-a modesty that may be essential to maintaining the myth that they are simply conduits for the desires of states-in practice they contribute to the "socialconstitution of the world," through the promotion of both law and social goods that are deeply and inescapably political.53 IOs have also become adept at reproducing themselves, especially (but not only) through their delegated power to establish subsidiary organs. Organizations in the UN system in particularhave generated, over the course of five decades, a bewildering number of organs and bodies; while today the pace of establishing new formally independent intergovernmental organizations appearsto be slowing down, the urge to institutionalize remains. Each year produces to more subsidiary IO organs and even an occasional proposal for another permanent IO address a newly apparent functional need.54 This growth includes the security field, as is suggested by the density of IOs involved in arms control or counterterrorism.55Indeed, the proliferation of IOs has overtaken international lawyers' ability to classify them. Scholars wrestle with growing uncertainty about the definition of "international organization," "international legal persons," and the parameters of the once narrowly demarcated field of "international institutional law."56While international lawyers used to assume, in accordance with the ICJ's advisory opinion in the ReparationforInjuriescase, that IOs are both defined and limited by
SeegenerallyKingsbury, Krisch, & Stewart, supranote 44. For a description of the evolving powers of the SecuCOUNCIL, supra note 22. rity Council, see THE UN SECURITY 51 CompareDaniel L. Nielson & Michael J. Tierney, Delegation to International Organizations:AgencyTheoryand World Bank Environmental Reform, 57 INT'L ORG. 241 (2003) (describing IOs in principal/agent terms but also discussing the possibility of "agencyslippage" through which an IO's collective principals may lose control over their Courtsin TheirPolitical Context(TranState WorkIO "agents"),with KarenJ. Alter, Agentsor Trustees?International ing Paper No. 8, Nov. 15, 2004), available at <http://ssrn.com/abstract= 622222> (critiquing Nielson and Tierney's principal/agent theory as applied to international courts valued for their autonomy). 52 Barnett & Finnemore, supra note 2, at 169-75. 53 Id. at 174-81 (citing as examples the IMF's coercion of states to get on the "right track," IO "shaming" techniques, establishment of "best practices," strategic use of information, agenda-setting activities, and other "constitutive" activities; the latter relate, for example, to defining what constitutes "development" or even a legitimate state (as in determining the proper scope of peacekeepers regarding the maintenance of a free market, a working democracy, and the "rule of law"). For a survey of UN contributions to development thinking and practice, see, for examFROMTHE LESSONS & LOUISEMMERIJ, THOMASG. WEISS,THE POWEROF UN IDEAS: JOLLY, ple, RICHARD FIRST60 YEARS(2005). 54 Thus, some scholars and policymakers have proposed creating new interstate organizations to handle environmental issues, refugees, counterterrorism, or international investment. For examples of the continuing proliferation ofsubentities within existing IOs, see Paul C. Szasz, The Complexificationofthe UnitedNations System, 1999 MAX PLANCK Y.B. UN L. 3. 55 See, e.g., id. To date, the Security Council has created at least three distinct sub-bodies in connection with its efforts since the events of September 11, 2001, to combat terrorism. SeegenerallyEric Rosand, SecurityCouncilResolution 1373, the Counter-TerrorismCommittee,and the FightAgainst Terrorism,97 AJIL 333 (2003); Eric Rosand, The Security Councils Efforts to Monitor the Implementation ofAl Qaeda/Taliban Sanctions, 98 AJIL 745 (2004). 56 CompareSANDS& KLEIN,supra note 9, at 16-19 (defining IOs and the "nature of international institutional law"), 115-19 (describing "other autonomous organizations," including environmental COPs/MOPs and commodity agreements).
50
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their "international legal personality," this view is now contested. Today, "autonomous institutional arrangements," such as COPs and MOPs under environmental framework agreements, appearto enjoy many ofthe capacities of traditional IOs, although they arenot generally recognized as international legal persons. These COPs and MOPs are concluding treatieswith international legal persons (such as traditional IOs and states) and appearto be deploying other "implied powers" pursuant to the principle of effectiveness-even without the attributes of Even as IOs have softened the traditional IOs such as permanency or their own secretariats.57 contours of international law, they appear to be softening the categories of lawmaking actors themselves. But perhaps the greatest impact IOs have had on lawmaking actors has been felt within the principal lawmakers:the states. As Antonia and Abram Chayes famously suggested, IOs have changed the nature of "sovereignty"into a status consideration, so that its enjoyment is no longer measured by degree of autonomy but by extent of membership and participation in IOs.58 Indeed, the most powerful states in the world are to some extent constrained by these organizations or their organizationallybased norms and find it necessaryto turn to IOs to fulfill national goals. Thus, at this writing, the United States appears to be paying a price, at least in terms of the sharing of burdens, for the lack of explicit Security Council authorization for Operation Iraqi Freedom; even the present unilaterally inclined U.S. president has turned to the Council to legitimate the occupation of Iraq and to assist the United States in conducting the war on terrorism, as well as in controlling weapons of mass destruction (WMDs).59 Other powerful states, such as France, which has attempted to exercise European leadership through its Security Council veto, has felt its power ebb and flow with its fortunes on that body. And smaller states, such as Bosnia-Herzegovina, Libya, and Nicaragua, remain dependent on the protection of the Council, and have tried to use other institutional entities, such as the ICJ, to level the playing field between themselves and the Council.60 The economic policies that many states can apply to their own polities are delimited by, among other things, decisions of the World Bank, the IMF, and the WTO. Participation in IOs has also helped to transform the internal structure of governments. For example, IOs have promoted the establishment of national civil aviation administrations to satisfy the ICAO's standards and recommended practices, medical authorities to respond to the requestsby the World Health Organization for information on the outbreak of communicable diseases and to give effect to its related global warnings, law enforcement units to implement
in MultilateralEnvironmental InstitutionalArrangements in A Phenomenon International Law, 94 AJIL623 (2000). Agreements: Little-Noticed
58ABRAMCHAYES ANTONIA HANDLERCHAYES, THE NEW SOVEREIGNTY (1995); see also Kal Raus& 27
57 SeeRobinR. Churchill GeirUlfstein, & Autonomous
Economic Debatein International the Law, 6 J. INT'LECON.L. 841, 853, 860-61 tiala,Rethinking Sovereignty is to instruments that (2003) (arguing IOs aresovereignty-enhancing if"sovereignty" redefined meansomething underthe UN Charter being is that otherthanthe abilityto takeautonomousaction).Foran argument sovereignty is to such that the rightof a stateto haveits sovereignty redefined mean "conditional" respected now sovereignty and Solidarity, Sovereignty: Security, obligations,seeAnne-MarieSlaughter, dependenton its fulfillingits Charter TheGrandThemes UN Reform, AJIL619, 627-30 (2005). 99 of
60 and of of SeeApplication the Conventionon the Prevention Punishment the Crimeof Genocide(Bosn.-Herz. and v. Serb.& Mont.) (Int'lCt. Justice,pending);Questionsof Interpretation Applicationof the 1971 Montreal v. ConventionArisingfromtheAerialIncidentat Lockerbie 1992 Measures, (Libyav.UK;Libya U.S.), Provisional Activitiesin andAgainstNicaragua(Nicar.v. U.S.), Merits, 3, ICJREP. 114 (Apr.14); Militaryand Paramilitary Use 1986 ICJREP.14 (June27); seealsoIanHurd, TheStrategic ofLiberalInternationalism: andtheUNSancLibya in ORG.495 (2005); IanJohnstone,ThePoweroflnterpretive Communities, POWER tions,1992-2003, 59 INT'L
See, e.g., SC Res. 1540 (Apr. 28, 2004); SC Res. 1483 (May 22, 2003), 42 ILM 1016 (2003); SC Res. 1390 (Jan. 28, 2002); SC Res. 1373 (Sept. 29, 2001).
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the Security Council's counterterrorism regime or the requisites of the WTO's TRIPs Agreement, and independent national courts capable of satisfying an ever-growing array of demands-from respecting the rights of criminal defendants as interpreted by the Human Rights Committee and regional human rights courts to respecting property and contractual rights as requiredby the WTO and the IMF.61And if, as Anne-Marie Slaughter has suggested, states are something other than the opaque billiard balls described by some political scientists and consist of diverse internal interest groups, IOs like the ILO, which for decades has both empowered and delegitimated particulargroups within states such as labor unions, have helped to inspire this insight.62 IOs also work alongside (and may empower) the transnational networks of government regulators that increasingly cast doubt on the "unitary"intent of many governments.63IOs, no less than transnationalnetworks of government regulators,have established symbiotic relationships with national subactors, which in turn has affected states' internal politics.64
III. IOS AND LEGALSCHOLARSHIP
For legal scholars, the most prominent impact of IOs has been on the nature of scholarship itself. David Bederman's tour d'horizon of the "peculiarlymessianic"American brand of international legal scholarship within thisJournal, for example, includes, as a prominent leitmotif, the periodic appeal of institutionalism, along with the ebbs and flows of faith in the "inexorable advancement of international law."65Indeed, the prominent breaksin his chronology of modes of scholarly discourse in the Journal-namely, 1914-1921, 1940-1946, the early and late Cold War periods, and the post-Cold War period- coincide not only with prominent global conflicts of the past century, but also with crucial institutional developments and the scholarly reactions prompted by them: faith in permanent arbitralmechanisms inspired by the Hague Peace Conference, approval and disapproval of the U.S. Senate's rejection of the League of Nations, the "explosion of interest"in international institutions inspired by the utopian visions of the interwar period and the subsequent establishment of the United Nations, appreciation of the growing pains of UN law in the earlyyears of the Cold War, dissection of the fault lines revealedin the GeneralAssembly and Security Council during the Cold War period, and, since 1990, the euphoria and dashed hopes regarding institutionalized multilateralism that ensued as the Cold War gave way to the "waron terrorism."
61 For instances of the impact of IOs on the internal structures of states, see, for example, MARTHA FINNEMORE, IN SOCIETY NATIONALINTERESTS INTERNATIONAL 34-66 (1996) (discussing UNESCO's impact on national
sciencepolicies).Note that IOs' impacton nationallawsand institutionsis not dependenton whethertheirrules of as are"self-executing" a matterof nationallaw.Thus, WTO decisionshavehad an impacton the practices both that in branches the United Statesnotwithstanding WTO law is not "self-executthe executiveand the legislative Jan.27, ing."See,e.g.,United States-Sections 301-310 of the TradeAct of 1974, Doc. WT/DS 152/R (adopted enforcetraderemedies 2000) (holdingtheUnitedStatesto itswordthatit wouldnot unilaterally inconsistentlywith its WTO obligations). 62 Polandand theILO, 13 DENV. J. INT'L in See,e.g.,David A. Wirth, TradeUnionRights the Workers'State: that within Polandand discredited how the ILO both legitimatedSolidarity L. & POL'Y (1984) (describing 269 licensedlaborunion). country'snonindependently 63 Standards See,e.g.,ANNE-MARIESLAUGHTER, THE NEW WORLD ORDER (2004); SabinoCassese,Global & PROBS. (2005). 68 109 Procedure, LAW CONTEMP. for NationalAdministrative 64 See, SLAUGHTER, supranote 63. e.g.,Wirth, supranote 62. Seegenerally 65 Bederman, and note 2, at 21. Fora surveyof how IOs haveinfluenced, in some casesmayhaveinspired, supra law in on the methodsof international surveyed thisJournal's Symposium Method,93 AJIL291 (1999), seeJoseE.
Alvarez, International Legal Perspectives,in THOMAS G. WEISS & SAM DAWS, THE OXFORD HANDBOOK ON THE UNITED NATIONS (forthcoming 2006).
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Richard H. Steinberg and Jonathan M. Zasloff's survey of the trajectoryof the role of power in the various isms that have characterizedscholarly discourse can easily be adapted to IO studies-a discipline that has also traverseda period of classicism and forms of realism, as well as sociological, rationalist, and liberal responses.66Indeed, as Steinberg and Zasloffimply, many of these competing isms are defined by the scholars' underlying approach to IOs. Some "structural realists,"for example, have defined themselves, as well as their scholarly opposites (namely the classicists), by disparaging the prospects of institutionalized multilateral cooperation.67 Realist-institutionalists like Lloyd Gruber have turned to the international financial institutions in particularto demonstrate the asymmetrical use of power.68The Chayeses' managerial model is based on reporting and other noncoercive mechanisms typical of institutional settings; in fact, the very definition of"sovereignty" that characterizesthe international legal process school is premised, as noted, on the function of IOs.69 Of course, IOs-as suppliers of needed forms of centralization and independence-assume prominent roles in the work of rationalist institutionalists like Robert Keohane, Kenneth Abbott, and Duncan Snidal.70Thomas Franck'scentennial contribution to thisJournalis very much in this tradition. His defense of the law on the use of force, directed principally at neorealist naysayers,is essentially a defense of the Charter of the United Nations and a reaffirmation of why states, even those inclined to use naked force, continue to need the multilateral legitimacy supplied by that institution.71 Franck argues, consistently with his Grotian forebears, that even the foremost military power in the world must respond to community expectations about its use of unilateral force.72 And even those not committed to explaining why states find IOs useful, such as law-andeconomics scholars, sometimes ask the same questions about IOs that Ronald Coase asked about the business firm, that is, "Why do they exist and, if their existence is justified, why is there not just one big one?"73Accordingly, Joel Trachtman and Jeffrey Dunoff explain the need to establish institutionalized hierarchy as a functionalist response to situations of everrising levels of asset specificity, uncertainty, and complexity; they advance an ambitious agenda for law and economics that would help to explain the interactions between institutionalized dispute settlers and between IOs.74
Richard H. Steinberg & Jonathan M. Zasloff, Power andInternationalLaw, 100 AJIL 64 (2006). Seegenerally ALVAREZ, supranote 14, at 17-57; Louis B. Sohn, The Growth ofthe Scienceoflnternational Organizations, in THE OF LAW251 (Karl W. Deutsch & Stanley Hoffmann eds., 1968). RELEVANCE INTERNATIONAL 67 CompareJohn Winter 1994/ Mearsheimer, The FalsePromiseofInternationalInstitutions, 19 INT'LSECURITY, AND PROGRESS INTEROF THE PROBLEMS 95, at 5, with INIS L. CLAUDEJR., SWORDSINTO PLOWSHARES: ORGANIZATION NATIONAL (1971). 68 LLOYDGRUBER,RULINGTHE WORLD (2000); see also POWERIN GLOBALGOVERNANCE, supra note 2; notes 127-30 infra and corresponding text. 69 CHAYES & CHAYES,supra note 58. 70 O. ROBERT KEOHANE, AFTER HEGEMONY(1984); Abbott & Snidal, supra note 33. 71 Thomas M. Franck, The Power ofLegitimacy and the LegitimacyofPower: International Law in an Age ofPower Disequilibrium, 100 AJIL 88 (2006). 72 Id. As the debate over the legality of Operation Iraqi Freedom suggests, even within the United States the public debate is not limited to determining whether the U.S. Congress authorized that operation but extends to whether the UN Security Council implicitly did so. See, e.g., William H. Taft IV & Todd F. Buchwald, Preemption, Iraq, andInternational Law, 97 AJIL 557 (2003). As this debate also implies, the participation of a state in IOs changes the dynamics between its branches of government (executive, judicial, and legislative) and, if it is a federal state, may also alter the dynamics between the federal and state levels. See generallyALVAREZ, supra note 14, at 617-20. 73 J. Jeffrey L. Dunoff & Joel P. Trachtman, EconomicAnalysis ofInternational Law, 24 YALE INT'L L. 1, 37, 49-53 (1999) (adapting Coase). The authors contend that, for example, the "best" organization is "the one that maximizes the positive sum of transaction gains, transaction losses, and transaction costs." Id. at 39. 74 Id. at 41. For these authors, an "assetspecific investment" is one that can realize its full value only in the context of continued relations with another party or that requires binding another person over time.
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Similarly, liberal theorists, such asAndrew Moravscik, have sought to explain the origin and function of institutionalized regimes like those governing human rights on the basis of the domestic interest groups.75And even Slaughter's reconceptualization of the nature of global governance, which does not rely on traditional IOs, defines the novelty of transnational networks of subgovernmental actors in part by what they are not; hers is a "New World Order" precisely to the extent that these networks avoid the stricturesassociatedwith permanent IOs.76 The move to institutions has also resulted in alternative, and more hopeful, conceptions of why nations behave. As noted, many constructivists use, as prime examples of the malleable interests of states, the consequences of evolving institutional practices.77Work on compliance by such scholarschallenges the traditional frameworkof liberalsand realists,who posit that IOs merely serve the predetermined interests of rational states and are effective only to the extent that they serve these needs. These constructivists argue instead that states "must be understood ... in relation to the institutions in which they areengaged"and that their engagement in these institutions-the interaction, communication, and discourse that occurs within IOs-helps to reconstruct states' interests, and indeed their identities, over time.78 On this view, the ideas, shared understandings, and norms (soft and hard) that emerge from participation in IOs "constrain and enable choices" for states.79The sociological approaches to compliance pursued by scholars such as Jutta Brunnee, Stephen Toope, Ryan Goodman, and Derek Jinks, all rely to some extent on concepts of"socialization" based on, for example, membership in international organizations.80As described by Brunnee and Toope, IO-grounded "interactional"law has much in common with the new forms of national regulation described by "democratic experimentalists" in both the United States and Europe.81The claim is that some IO sources of law function at an "internalized, normative level" and "not merely at the level of rational calculation."82 This understanding of the interaction between states and IOs expands the ways "compliance" with this new kind of "interactional"law occurs, altering perceptions of how international regulation is effected and the way its consequences ought to be measured. It changes the forms of the traditional "carrots"and "sticks" used to induce compliance with international law, but it also suggests that states may be induced to conform by institutional ethos, without explicit consideration of relative costs and benefits or coercive enforcement
75 Andrew Moravcsik, Explaining International Human Rights Regimes:Liberal Theory and WesternEurope, 1 EUR. J. INT'L REL. 157 (1995). 76 SeegenerallySLAUGHTER, supra note 63. At the same time, Slaughter apparently no longer claims that transnational networks are displacing IOs; her more recent work acknowledges that these networks often work alongside and in tandem with IOs. CompareAnne-Marie Slaughter, The RealNew World Order, FOREIGN AFF., Sept./Oct. 1997, at 183, with SLAUGHTER, supra. 77 See, e.g., Cassese, supra note 63 (discussing the impact of the WTO both on subunits within governments and in changing government's perceived interests). 78 Jutta Brunnee & Stephen J. Toope, Persuasion and Enforcement:Explaining Compliance with International Law, 2002 FINNISH Y.B. INT'L L. 273, 276.
79
Id. at 277.
80 See, e.g., Brunnee & Toope, supra note 78; Ryan Goodman & Derek Jinks, How to Influence States: Socialization and International Human Rights Law, 54 DUKE L.J. 621 (2004). 81 CompareOrly Lobel, The Renew Deal: The Fall ofRegulation and the Rise of Governancein Contemporary Legal Thought, 89 MINN. L. REV. 342 (2004) (describing "bottom-up" approaches for implementing or enforcing national law), with Brunnee & Toope, supra note 78 (describing international mechanisms for inducing compliance), andJanet Koven Levit, A Bottom-upApproachto International Lawmaking: The Tale of Three TradeFinance Instruments,30 YALEJ.INT'LL. 125 (2005) (describing lawmaking aspects of the ICC Banking Commission, the Berne Union, and the Arrangement on Officially Supported Export Credits). 82 Brunnee & Toope, supra note 78, at 276.
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(such as binding adjudication).83It directs attention to "bottom-up" processes for encouraging compliance, as well as the "top-down" processes traditionally associatedwith international law and organization. It also suggests that when states do engage in institutionalized international adjudication, as they increasingly do in several regimes, the normative ripples may extend, thanks to the legitimacy conferred on multilateral dispute settlers, beyond solving the dispute at hand and, for example, may "socialize"national judges into greater acceptance of international rules.84
IV. IO SCHOLARSHIPTODAY
Most of today's international lawyers continue to be engaged in the "progressive"Grotian tradition. For a motley group that includes neopositivists, liberal institutionalists, and even some neorealists, the turn to institutions remains a worthy objective, and the goal of policymakersand scholars remains the same as it was when the League of Nations was created: establishing yet more institutional forms for governing the world without world government. Theirs is the continuation of a century-old effort to perfect a more integrated, or at least more coherent, system of institutions that, as John Jackson puts it (no longer in Lauterpacht'sVictorian terms), will transform "power-oriented"diplomacy, based on balance of power, to "rule-oriented" adjudication, based on the rule of law.85 Accordingly, many international lawyers remain hard at work proposing new IOs or proposing institutional reforms to correct the "birthdefects"of the IOs that we now have. The ever more porous nature of national borders leads lawyers to assume that there is more need than ever for yet deeper or more evolved forms of institutionalized international governance.86Like those who began the move to institutions, today's contributors to specialized journals like GlobalGovernance continue to believe that "only with global governance will states and peoples be able to cooperate on economic, environmental, security, and political issues, settle their disputes in a nonviolent manner, and advance their common interests and values" and that "[a]bsent an adequate supply of global governance, states are likely to retreatbehind protective barriersand re-create the conditions for enduring conflict."87 Like those who pinned their faith on scientific progress through the League of Nations,88 the majority of international lawyersand fellow travelersin international relations rarelysee an
83 See, e.g., id. at 292 ("interactional law generates self-bindingness and adherence to norms, even in the absence of material incentives or sanctioning mechanisms"). 84 See, e.g., SLAUGHTER, supra note 63, at 65-103; Paul Schiff Berman, Judges as Cosmopolitan Transnational Actors, 12 TULSAJ. COMP. & INT'L L. 109 (2004). 85 WILLIAM DAVEY,& ALAN SYKES, LEGAL PROBLEMS INTERNATIONAL OF O. JOHN H. JACKSON, ECOJ. NOMICRELATIONS 254 (4th ed. 2002); see also Jackson, supra note 7; cf Kennedy, supra note 2, at 982 (noting how the League of Nations proponents sought to decontextualize wars by turning them into "disputes"). 86See, e.g., REPORTOF THE COMMISSIONON GLOBALGOVERNANCE,OUR GLOBALNEIGHBORHOOD (1995); Ernst-Ulrich Petersmann, Constitutionalism and InternationalAdjudication: How to Constitutionalize the UNDispute Settlement System?31 N.Y.U. J. INT'L L. & POL. 753 (1999). For a more limited proposal to expand the domain of the WTO, see Andrew T. Guzman, Global Governanceand the WTO, 45 HARV. INT'L L.J. 303 (2004); Andrew T. Guzman, Choice of Law: New Foundations, 90 GEO. L.J. 883 (2002). 87 Michael Barnett & Raymond Duvall, Power in Global Governance, in POWERIN GLOBALGOVERNANCE, supra note 2, at 1, 1. 88 There is a clear and unmistakable connection between today's self-identified "progressive"developers of international law and early advocates of international organization in thisJournal. See, e.g., Albert Kocourek, Some Reflections on the Problem ofa Societyof Nations, 12 AJIL 508 (1918); John Bassett Moore, International Law: Its Present and Future, 1 AJIL 12 (1907); Paul S. Reinsch, International Unions and Their Administration, 1 AJIL 604.
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IO, proposed or existing, that they do not like. IOs, after all, "bring out the best in the international community and rescue it from its worst instincts";89they "level the playing field" between the powerful and the weak, the rich and the poor, by promoting recourse to the delimited, "neutral"discourse of law.90 Developments like the establishment of the International Criminal Court are celebrated as a new "constitutional moment" for the international community;91 the proliferation of institutionalized dispute settlers praised as a new judicial "branch"for global governance.92Like those who were present at the creation of the United Nations, today's liberal institutionalists and constructivists continue to believe in the possibility, although not the inevitability, of progress;that modernization processes and interdependence (or, now, globalization) are transforming the characterof global politics; that institutions can be established to help manage these changes; that democracy is a principled objective, as well as an issue of peace and security; and that states and international organizations have an obligation to protect individuals, promote universalvalues, and create conditions that encourage political and economic reform.93 Key themes in IO scholarship continue to reflect this progressnarrative,this faith in the possibility of continued scientific progress through an expanding domain of institutionalized international law. Much contemporary scholarship, at least in law, contains policy prescriptions for how best to "constitutionalize" IOs;94how best to use IOs to manage the "decentralization" of the state;95or how best to institutionalize compliance with international rules.96At the same time, the leading IO scholarship of our day wrestles with the structural and systemic challenges brought about by the prior century's successful move to institutions.97 Within the United States, the present-day heirs ofGrotius urge the current Bush administration, as League advocates did prior to the Senate's rejection of the Covenant, to continue to work within the UN system ratherthan act unilaterally, especially with respect to the war on terrorism and the use of force. They urge compliance with WTO Appellate Body rulings, recourse to the IAEA and common approaches with the European Union with respect to WMDs, and ratification of UN-sponsored multilateral treaties. The European heirs of Grotius urge much the same on
89 Barnett & Duvall, supra note 87, at 1.
90 See,
91 See, e.g., Leila Nadya Sadat & S. Richard Carden, The New International Criminal Court:An UneasyRevolution,
a Anne-Marie R. & 107 Slaughter Laurence Helfer, Toward Theory ofEffective SupranationalAdjudication, YALE of Relations/The 96 (2002) (entitled"TheLegalization International L.J.273 (1997). Seegenerally ASILPROC. Internationalization LegalRelations"). of 97 As Laurence Helferhasnoted,today'sscholars attemptto resolvethe potentialconflictsbroughtaboutby the betweeninstitutionalized of proliferation IOs (as throughproposalsfor normativeand institutionalhierarchies seekto improvecompliance with IO-generated norms,attemptto deterstates'attemptsto enterandexit regimes), R. institutionalized try regimes,and generally to buttressthe legitimacyof IOs. Laurence Helfer, Constitutional L.A. L. REV.193 (2003). in 37 Analogies theInternational LegalSystem, LOY.
INT'LL. & POL. 709 (1999). For a critique ofsuch views, seeJose E. Alvarez, TheNew Dispute Settlers:(Half Truths and Consequences,38 TEX. INT'L L.J. 405 (2003). 93 Barnett & Duvall, supra note 87, at 5 (citing Doyle, Zacher & Matthews, Keohane, and Deudney & Ikenberry). For a recent rearticulation of such views, see, for example, Slaughter, supranote 58. SeegenerallyLauterpacht, supra note 12, at 19-53. 94 See, supra note 86. e.g., Petersmann, 95 See, SLAUGHTER, supra note 63. e.g., 96 as 37 See,e.g.,ClaireR. Kelly,Enmeshment a Theory Compliance, N.Y.U. J. INT'L L. & POL. 303 (2005); of
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their own governments but also see IOs as the only means by which the superpower, "GulliverIndeed, the uses of IOs lie at the center of recent disagreements like, might be restrained."98 between U.S. and European policymakers (and some scholars) with respect to the legitimacy of unilateralactions.99But, as is suggested by the differences between some contemporary U.S. and European scholars and policymakers, the institutionalization of international law has also provoked legitimacy concerns. The most familiar challenge, invoked by opponents of distinct IOs on the right or the left and especiallywithin the United States, concerns the "democratic"credentials of the new international law produced in the age of IOs. Much contemporary scholarship deals with a chorus of complaints that particularIOs, or IOs generally, fail to represent domestic constituencies in the way elected representativeswithin democracies do, that their processes for lawmaking areinsufficiently transparentor insufficiently open to participation by national interest groups or members oftransnational civil society, or that IOs fail to respect individual rights associated with democratic governments (from the rights to due process under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights to the welfare rights under the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights). Although these forms of democratic critiques are not consistent with each other, they challenge the bona fides of IOs as varied as the WTO and the International Criminal Court for failing to make the necessary"vertical"or top-down connections between their international forms of governance (including by international judges in the course of adjudication) and those at the national level.'0l Other critiques of IOs, most commonly made by developing countries, challenge them for failing to respect in practice the sovereign equality that is usually solemnly affirmed by their 10 charters. Whether directed at institutional organswith weighted forms of voting that elevate the rights of certain states over others (such as the UN Security Council, the World Bank, and the IMF) or institutions that more subtly privilege the interests of some states over others (such as the WTO Appellate Body and even ad hoc war crimes tribunals), these "horizontal"comdemocratic critiques in practice. 02 The resultsmay be incoplaints often merge with "vertical" herent, occasionally even violent, public protests (like those targeting recent WTO trade
98
INT'L 531, 532 (2005). FORDHAM L.J. 99See, International Learn WhatShould fom KarlMarx?17 LEIDEN INT'L J. e.g.,MarttiKoskenniemi, Lawyers L.229,240 (2004) (describing someseea "newstruggle how betweenanunmediated advoforeignpolicymoralism formalism catedby a singlesuperpower an anti-imperial and insistingon mediationthroughlawandinternational A See Unilateralism International in Law:ItsRoleand Limits: UnitedStates-European institutions"). generally Sym40 L., J. of posium,11 EUR.J. INT'L Nos. 1, 2 (2000); PaulW. Kahn, TheQuestion Sovereignty, STAN. INT'LL. comparable U.S.-Europedivides,see David JayneHill, EditorialComment, The ThirdAssembly theLeague of of Nations,17 AJIL77, 79 (1923). l00For an overviewof thesechallenges, for example,ALFREDC. AMAN JR., THE DEMOCRACY DEFICIT see, 1 Governance andAmerican L. (2004); PaulB. Stephan,International Democracy, CHI.J. INT'L 237 (2000); Stein, Lessonsfrom the EU Experience Governance: supranote 9; Grainnede Buirca, DemocratizingTransnational (ColumbiaLaw School Young ScholarsWorkshop,2004-05), at <http://www.law.columbia.edu/faculty/fac_ of U.S. tendto focuson the "representational" resources/faculty_lunch/>. scholars failings IOs, see,e.g.,Rubenfeld, note 99, whereas scholars tend to focuson the failures IOs to respect international of the supra European legalrights
of individuals and of states, see, e.g., ERIKADE WET, THE CHAPTERVII POWERSOF THE UNITED NATIONS 259 (2004); Jeb Rubenfeld, The Two World Orders,WILSON Q., Sept. 2003, at 22. For an early recognition of
Simon Chesterman, The United Nations and the Law of War: Power and Sensibility in International Law, 28
to otherthings, tendency powerful the of nations usethevotesof theirnonsovereign (1914)(discussing, among in to their to of colonies enhance votingprowess, thedetriment sovereign unions). equality, administrative 102 Fora of international see turn general critique the"Americanized" to institutionalized adjudication, Ugo
10 LEGAL and Mattei,A Theory mperialLaw:A Studyon U.S. Hegemony theLatinResistance, IND.J. GLOBAL of
STUD. 383, 416-24 (2003).
SECURITY COUNCIL (2004). 101 This is not a new concern.See,e.g.,Denys P. Myers,Representation PublicInternational in Unions,8 AJIL81
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rounds) or revisionist defenses of old-fashioned sovereignty, this time as a tool to protect against IO-inflicted inequalities.103In some quarters,IOs are no longer valued as useful mechanisms for pooling sovereign interests or as neutral appliers of the real interests of all states, but areseen as agents who have "runamok" in disregardof the interests of their collective principals or as overly faithful agents-though only of some of their most powerful members. Ironically, those IOs regardedas having been the most successful in the Grotian enterprise of creating or enforcing ever more international law, such as the WTO, have been the subject of the most vociferous complaints-precisely on the grounds that they have done the most to undermine the power of (some) states to govern themselves.104 IOs also face challenges on ideological grounds. Many express the concern that the Bretton Woods institutions and even erstwhile voices of the developing world, such as UNCTAD,are now enforcers of a model of governance and development premised on the "Washington consensus" or are proselytizersof "best practices"that invariably support the business interests of multinational enterprises, usually based in the West, at the expense of more equitable models of sustainable development.105Or they contend, more forthrightly, that some IOs are instruments of hegemonic control or devices to promote Gramscian collaboration on the part of the victimized.106Other forms of ideological critique focus on the gender politics of IOs or target the epistemic communities (e.g., "free traders")that have "captured"particular IOs.107 The heirs of Grotius have been quick to respond with a wide range of potential remedies. Proposed reforms to address the various kinds of "democratic deficits" range from the radical and highly unlikely, such as creating a parliamentaryassembly of elected representativesof the peoples of the world to function alongside the present General Assembly, to the more easily accommodated, such as greater acceptance of amicus briefs before institutionalized international adjudicators, enhanced parliamentary involvement in decisions to accede to institutional regimes and in IO processes thereafter, establishment of forms of ombudsmen within IOs, and greatertransparencyand access for members of international civil society.108Others
103 See, e.g., Kingsbury, supra note 44. For an entirely different defense of sovereignty that is nonetheless A. (2004). grounded in perceived threats posed by IOs, see JEREMY RABKIN,THE CASEFOR SOVEREIGNTY 104 SeeStein, supranote 9. 105 These ideological concerns range from the mildly critical, see, e.g., Benedict Kingsbury, FirstAmendmentLiberalism as Global LegalArchitecture:Ascriptive Groupsand the Problems of the Liberal NGO Model of International CivilSociety, 3 CHI. J. INT'LL. 183 (2002) (suggesting the narrowing effects of conceptions of "FirstAmendment" rights in the United States and Western states), to the all-embracing, see, e.g., Mattei, supra note 102, at 383 (criticizing the turn to "imperial"law through the vehicle of"predatory economic globalization"). Notably, today's critiques have gone beyond the international financial institutions. See, e.g., Kristen Boon, LegislativeReformin PostconflictZones:Jus Post Bellum and the ContemporaryOccupant'sLaw-making Powers, 50 MCGILLL.J. 285 (2005) THE RIDDLE (discussing attempts at market reform in the guise of UN peacekeeping). SeegenerallySUSANMARKS, AND THE CRITIQUEOF IDEOLOGY INTERNATIONAL OF ALLCONSTITUTIONS: LAW, DEMOCRACY, (2003). 106 See, e.g., Jose E. Alvarez, Hegemonic International Law Revisited, 97 AJIL 873 (2003); Lloyd Gruber, Power Politics and the Institutionalization ofInternational Relations, in POWERIN GLOBAL GOVERNANCE, supra note 2, at 125; Nico Krisch, International Law in Times ofHegemony: Unequal Power and the Shaping ofthe International ORDER: Legal Order, 16 EUR.J. INT'LL. 369 (2005); Mattei, supranote 102; seealso HUMANIZINGOUR GLOBAL IN ESSAYS HONOUR OF IVAN HEAD (Obiora Chinedu Okafor & Obijiofor Aginam eds., 2003). 107See, e.g., HILARYCHARLESWORTH CHRISTINECHINKIN, THE BOUNDARIESOF INTERNATIONAL & LAW 171-200 (2000); Robert Howse, From Politics to Technocracy-and Back Again: The Fate of the Multilateral supra note 14, at 640-45. Trading Regime, 96 AJIL 94 (2002); see also ALVAREZ, 108 For discussion of these reform proposals, see, for example, Accountability of International Organisations, in BERLIN CONFERENCE LAW INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION, (Final Report of Comm. on Accountability of International Organizations, 2004), available at <http://www.ila-hq.org/pdf/Accountability/Final%20Report%202004. pdf>; Stein, supranote 9, at 531-34. See also the ongoing discussionswithin the InternationalLaw Commission in connection with the topic of responsibilityof internationalorganizations,for example, in Giorgio Gaja, Second Report on Responsibilityof InternationalOrganizations,UN Doc. A/CN.4/541 (2004). But others have denied that a "democratic deficit"trulyexists at the internationallevel, defending the legitimacy ofIOs either on the basis that they aretechnocratic
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propose dealing with the proliferation of IO-induced "global administrative law" headon-by turning to analogous features within national administrative law that serve to patrol its domain.109 Horizontal concerns over interstate equity have prompted proposals that, for example, would reform the weighted-voting schemes of the international financial institutions or expand the size of (or diminish the use of the veto within) the UN Security Council. Although critiques that IOs embody and promote particular ideologies pose more difficult of challenges, those who have not entirely lost faith in the "transformingpromise"110 IOs have responded by calling, among other things, for political or legal constraints on IOs, including those peculiarly subject to hegemonic control, such as the UN Security Council.1" But the vertical, horizontal, and ideological complaints against IOs persist not only because most of the proposed Grotian reforms have yet to emerge. The push to enhance "voice" is so insistent precisely because international lawyers have been relativelysuccessful in discouraging "exit."'12 Indeed, continued participation in IOs, and in UN and Bretton Woods institutions in particular, is regarded today as so intrinsic to the enjoyment of sovereignty that exit is no longer a real option for most states most of the time.113 As this observation suggests, many of the critiques of IOs now being heard, whether on the streets where prominent IOs live or in the pages of scholarly journals, are inspired by the very success of the Grotian consensus that led to their establishment, proliferation, and growing legal clout. More troubling for the future of IOs is that many of the challenges they now face strike at the very foundations of the "Grotian"tradition that produced them. Today's IO critiques go much further than those once advanced by realistskeptics of international law. Contemporary critiques do not merely question, as did President Wilson's critics, whether an "international community" sharing common values really exists. They do not question the merits of only those IOs that purport to deal with use of force at the heart of sovereignty, such as the League of Nations and the United Nations. Today, thanks in part to a very public (and not merely academic) backlash generated by institutionalization, every aspect of the Grotian tradition is contested and no IO escapes critical scrutiny. The value of universalparticipation has been tainted, on the one hand, by the participation of undemocratic states (as in the UN Human Rights Commission) and, on the other hand, by the extent to which universal participation, when paired with certain forms of voting by consensus, may exacerbaterule by the powerful.14 The proliferation of legal actors and subjects
orregulatory or to and that organizations already approval on thepremise IOsaresubject subject parliamentary executive to adiverse ofunique & set mechanisms. e.g.,Grainne Buirca, note100;RuthW. Grant Robert de See, accountability supra 29 0. Keohane, REV. (2005).Forcontrasting views 99 AccountabilityandAbuses WorldPolitics,AM.POL.SCI. ofPowerin on theviability establishing international an as for comof deficit, assembly a remedy theUN democratic parliamentary Toward FOREIGN Jan./Feb. an Falk AFF., Strauss, GlobalParliament, 2001, at 21 (advocating pareRichard & Andrew Be A electedworldassembly), with RobertA. Dahl, CanInternational View,in Organizations Democratic? Skeptic's that DEMOCRACY'S 19 (IanShapiro Casiano & Hacker-Cordon 1999)(arguing suchanassembly infeais EDGES eds., sible). 109 See charKrisch,& Stewart, Kingsbury, supranote 44 (identifyinga need for "globaladministrative space" acterized enhanced to reliance reasoned adherence substantive on standards, decisions, by procedural participation, and formsof review). 110SeeKoskenniemi, supranote 99, at 231. 111 DE WET, supra note 100; AUGUST REINISCH, INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONSBEFORE See,
e.g., NATIONALCOURTS (2000); Chesterman, supra note 98. 112SeegenerallyEyal Benvenisti, Exit and Voicein theAgeofGlobalization,98 MICH. L. REV. 167 (1999); RichardH.
and at Constitutional, Political 98 Judicial Constraints, AJIL247 (2004). Steinberg, Lawmaking theWTO:Discursive,
113 But see Laurence R. Helfer, Exiting Treaties, 91 VA. L. REV. 1579 (2005) (explaining when and why states abandon their treaty commitments). 114 For an example of the former critique, see Kenneth Anderson, Squaringthe Circle? ReconcilingSovereigntyand Global Governance Through Global Government Networks, 118 HARV. L. REV. 1255, 1296 n.67 (2005) (book
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in the age of IOs is no longer regardedas an unalloyed good, at least not by those who see the or "decentralization"of the state as undemocratic or unaccountable, 115 those who contend that and democratization at the national level do not always go hand in IO-based legalization hand." 6 The possibility that IOs may mobilize internal interest groups within liberal states or at the international level has a darker edge-for those who suggest that processes have IO Western-based NGOs and multinational corporations or, alternatively, empowered primarily for those who argue that processes have increased the power of national interest groups IO The Grotians' faith in techas trade protectionists) to the detriment of global welfare.117 (such nocratic expertise has been shaken by a public-choice literaturethat emphasizes the risksof delegating authority to the "unaccountable"agents of lOs-from their designated experts to their civil servants-and especially the likely damage to national or global welfare of capture, rent seeking, and log rolling.18 Trust in international civil servants has been further undermined by contemporary revelations (e.g., from the UN oil-for-food scandal to widely publicized rapes attributed to UN peacekeepers),as well as by Weberian insights into the pathologies of bureaucracies, international and national."19Adjudicative lawmaking has been criticized either because international dispute settlers are considered too similar to "unaccountable"judges in otherwise democratic states or because they are deemed too distinct in their features to share the legitimacy of national judges who are made accountable to the electorates of democratic
review)(contendingthatthe United Nationsis "almost definitiona corruptnetworkbecauseits doorsareopen by to the wickedas well as the good").For an exampleof the latter,seeAndrewHurrell,Power,Institutions, the and in that Production GOVERNANCE, note 2, at 33, 51 (suggesting the stability supra oflnequality, POWERIN GLOBAL on of hegemonicpower"depends consensusas well as coercionand on the capacityto engendercollaboration"). 115 See,e.g.,Anderson,supranote 114. 116 and The ORG.661 (2000); 54 See,e.g.,Miles Kahler,Conclusion: Causes Consequences ofLegalization, INT'L seealso Outcomes: and Atik,IdentifyingAntidemocratic Trade,19 U. Jeffery Self-Sacrifice, International Authenticity, PA.J. INT'L how limit democratic ECON.L. 229 (1998) (describing WTO processes choices);Stephan,supranote 100 (arguingthat IOs are undemocratic the extent that they strengthenthe powersof the executivebranch, to enhancethe powerof certaininterestgroupsoverothers,or bolsterthe powerof 10 bureaucrats). 117 the See,e.g.,KennethAnderson,TheOttawaConvention BanningLandmines, Roleof nternational Non-gov11 L. ernmental and CivilSociety, EUR. INT'L 91 (2000). Fora critiqueof J. Organizations theIdeaoflnternational the WTO on the basisof which interests empowers within the North, see, forexample,Gregory it Power, Shaffer, IN andtheWTO:AComparativeInstitutionalApproach, in POWER GLOBAL Governance, GOVERNANCE, note supra within the United Statesand the European 2, at 130, 135 (contendingthatwhile powerfulconstituencies Union, statepowerin theWTO to promotetheirinterests, suchaslargemultinationals tradeassociations, and harness businessandNGOs in smallercountriescannot).Evenwith respectto the United States,the WTO's impacton democraticprocesses domesticinterestgroupshasdividedcommentators. and John Compare O. McGinnis& MarkL. L. TradeConstitution, HARV. REV.511 (2000) (praising WTO for"correcting" 114 the the Movsesian,TheWorld flawsin the U.S. democratic withJudithGoldstein& LisaL. Martin, processthatgiveriseto tradeprotectionism), Trade andDomesticPolitics:A ORG.603 (2000) (suggesting Liberalization, Note,54 INT'L Legalization, Cautionary that WTO legalizationmay have mobilizedantitradegroupswhile discouraging exportersfrom mobilizingin defenseof freetrade),andPaulB. Stephan, Rules, Accountability andInternationalLawmaking: Rents andLegitimacy, L. that 17 NW.J. INT'L & BUS.681,713 (1996 -97) (suggesting whatpassesforWTO-inducedtrade liberalization For grounds,that is, for "mayturnout to be specialinterestlegislation"). a critiqueof the WTO on constructivist for see epistemiccommunityof freetraders, atmosphere a narrow-minded helpingto createand sustaina "club" Howse, supranote 107. view of the "rentseeking" nonstateinterestgroupsthat aregiven accessto IO lawmaking 118 For a critical by note 117. (Rentseekinghasbeendefinedaseffortsto obtainquotarents, see, processes, forexample, Stephan,supra in or the usingup of realresources an effortto securerightsto economicrentsarisingfromgovernmentpolicies.) SeealsoJonathanR. Macey,Regulatory as to Globalization a Response Regulatory 52 L.J. Competition, EMORY 1353 of as the self-interests the reg(2003) (explaining impetusforinternational regulation stemmingfromthe perceived ulatorsthemselves); EnricoColombatto& JonathanR. Macey,A PublicChoice ModelofInternational Economic and L. Cooperation theDeclineof theNation State,18 CARDOZO REV.925 (1996) (semble). 119 Seegenerally featuresof 10 ALVAREZ, supranote 14, at 365-94. For a descriptionof the "pathological" see bureaucracies, MichaelN. Barnett& MarthaFinnemore,ThePolitics,Powerand Pathologies International of
Organizations, 53 INT'L ORG. 699 (1999).
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states through a variety of mechanisms.120The development agenda of IOs has been criticized as a continuation-albeit accompanied by more politically correct rhetoric- of the colonialist enterpriseor, more moderately,for failingto recognizethe need for a more nuanced applicationof the "Washington consensus."'21 Faith in functionalism as the engine for institutionalized cooperation has been shaken by the premise that the problems attendant on globalization do not consist only of"market failures"requiringever-risingforms of international regulation, but also emerge from self-inflicted "government failures"produced by mistaken reliance on global legal elites who have undertaken ineffectual or counterproductive codification efforts.122Confidence in permanent venues for international discourse has been undermined by critical takes on the identity of the participants in that discourse and its prospects for success.123Constructivists' and managerialists'hopes for greaterlevels of compliance through "socialization"or IOinduced changes in state interests have been shaken by empirical scholarship that questions the level of compliance within IO regimes,124as well as contentions that to the extent that IOs are indeed remaking states, they are changing them "in ways that favor the interests of transnational capital" and not always that favor the interests of the most affected populations.125 Much of the contemporary hostility toward IOs reflects a growing recognition that the benefits of the values advanced by IOs-centralization and independence-are not distributed There is a growing awareness, particularlyas IOs centralize their own equally among states.126 as well as concentrate the power of their most powerful members, that institutionalizapower tion may not have truly "leveledthe playing field"as advertised,even though the relativepowers of rich and poor or West and "other"areundoubtedly "more equal"than before, when the bulk of today's states were deemed entirely outside the domain of "civilized"law. Some of the skepticism about the value of IOs as "neutral"venues for regulation or discourse stems from postmodern doubts about the law's neutrality. Even that supposed great leveler of power within some organizations, institutionalized dispute settlement, has come under challenge because of asymmetric materialresourcesin setting out the rules and procedures, the power dynamics that determine which treaty-contract issues will be "completed" by the adjudicative process, the
120 SeegenerallyStephan, supra note 117. For a critique of the assumptions that international lawyers make about the desirability ofjudicial "independence" at the international level, see Eric A. Posner & John C. Yoo,Judiciallnde-
THE MAKINGOF INTERNATIONAL SOVEREIGNTYAND LAW See, e.g., ANTHONYANGHIE,IMPERIALISM, 190-95,263-68 (2005); DANI RODRIK,GROWTHSTRATEGIES (Aug. 2004), at <http://ksghome.harvard.edu/ -drodrik/growthstratl O.pdf>. 122 Stephan, supra note 100.
123
the E. U.? (IILJWorking Paper 2004/5), at <http://www.iilj.org/global_adlaw/> (critiquing transnational governance processes, including within the European Union, as forms for deliberative democracy); Jiirgen Neyer & Michael Schr6ter, Deliberative Europe and the Rejected Constitution, Paper presented at conference on law and democracy in Europe, European University Institute (Sept. 22-24, 2005) (critiquing deliberative practices within the European Union), at <http://www.iue.it/LAW/ResearchTeaching/Cidel/Index.shtml>. 124 See, e.g., Hathaway, supra note 11; see also Andrew T. Guzman, A Compliance-BasedTheoryof nternational Law, 90 CAL. L. REV. 1823, 1885 (2002) (concluding that, given the ineffectiveness of certain international regimes, international lawyers should devote their efforts to economic regulation rather than concern themselves with war, arms control, territorial limits, neutrality, or human rights).
125
IN GLOBAL GOVERNANCE,
note 2, at 59, 65; seealso Hurrell, supra note 1 14, at 52 (describing those who believe "socialization" "derives either from great power imposition or from the competing dynamics of the state system"); Krisch, supra note 106, at 375 (discussing the prospects for "hegemonic" socialization); Nico Krisch, Imperial International Law 58 (Global Law Working Paper 01/04), at <http://www.nyulawglobal.org/workingpapers/detail/documents/KrischFinalo904.pdf> [hereinafterKrisch, Imperial IL] (criticizingsome IOs' reliance on the market as a tool for hegemonic compliance-as through use of Standardand Poor's or Moody's ratings for countries). 126 Cf Abbott & Snidal, supra note 33 (describing the benefits of IO-based forms of centralization and independence).
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unequal power of states to operate in the shadow of dispute settlement, and states' unequal abilities to access dispute settlement or to avoid its constraints.'27 Such doubts feed skepticism about the value of"constitutionalization" (aswith respect to the WTO) and the merits of promoting legalization by granting private parties access to international dispute resolution.'28 Even the once-innocuous idea that IOs serve as disseminators of innovative ideas is no longer regardedwith equanimity-not by those who contend that IO notions of good governance, including ideas about the proper separation of powers, the central role of courts, the proper sphere for regulating business, and technical standards,are unduly and unwisely influenced by the United States.129 As this criticism suggests, recognition that state power continues to matter within IOs (and that its exercise generates predictable resistance) has undermined the progress narrative that characterized the turn to IOs. The manifold examples of the purported exercise of power through IOs-that is, the exercise of state power through forum shifting, recourse to private arbitration (as under the auspices of the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes), the imposition of multilateral forms of conditionality (as by the IMF), expressive but selective condemnations of "rogue"states (as by the IAEA and the Security Council), and the absence of equal, effective access to institutionalized dispute settlement (as in the WTO)raise considerable doubts about whether the new conception of sovereignty as "status"and the new ways states are being made to "behave"reallyconstitute progress. 30 Enthusiasm for institutionalization has waned as more states find that the "progress"that IOs bring increasingly makes them unwilling rule takers rather than avid participants in a "pooling of sovereignty" for the benefit of all.'13 Second thoughts about the value of institutionalization, by those who were not "present at the creation" and have a less vested interest in IOs' success, account for contemporary reform proposals that are strikingly un-Grotian. Some of these suggest a twenty-first-century move away from institutions nearly as intense as the post-World War II move toward them. Doubts about the "bureaucraticsclerosis"that characterizesmost IOs may explain why the pace of institutionalization appears to be slowing down (at least by some measures) or why some regions of the world, such as Asia, have not shared the general post-World War II enthusiasm for them.132 It may also explain the appeal of less institutionalized alternatives (such as
127 See, e.g., Andrew T. Guzman & Beth A. Simmons, Power Plays and Capacity Constraints: The Selection of STUD. 557 (2005) (empirical study concluding that Defendants in World Trade Organization Disputes, 34 J. LEGAL the lack of financial, human, and institutional capital explains LDCs' continuing inability to participate fully in international dispute settlement); Shaffer, supra note 117 (describing the embedded inequities of WTO dispute settlement with respect to poorer states); see also Gruber, supra note 106. 128 CompareAlec Stone Sweet, Judicialization and the Constructionof Governance,32 COMP. POL. STUD. 147 (1999) (describing how granting private parties access to international dispute settlement contributes to legalization), with Robert Howse & Kalypso Nicolaidis, Enhancing WTO Legitimacy:Constitutional or Global Subsidiarity? 16 GOVERNANCE (2003) (questioning the value of proposals to grant private causes of action in order to con73 stitutionalize the WTO). For a synthesis ofanticonstitutional views within the WTO literature, see CASS,supranote 24, at 207-37. 129 See, e.g., Krisch, Imperial IL, supra note 125, at 55; see also B. S. Chimni, International Institutions Today:An Imperial Global State in the Making, 15 EUR. J. INT'L L. 1 (2004). 130 See, e.g., Hurrell, supra note 114, at 57-58 (agreeing that "conditional sovereignty" exists but suggesting that it is mostly conditional for the weak). 131 See, e.g., Barnett & Finnemore, supra note 2, at 182. 132 On "bureaucraticsclerosis," see id. For the suggestion that we are now in a "post-institutionalist" period dominated by continued proliferation of NGOs but a more restrained stance toward establishing new IOs, see CHARAND THE CHANGINGFACEOF INTERNATIONAL LOTTEKU, GLOBALGOVERNANCE LAW 26-34 (ACUNS Rep. & Papers No. 2,2001), availableat <http://www.acuns.org/public/research_library/>. For an account of the resistance to certain forms of "legalization" in Asia and the Pacific, see Miles Kahler, Legalization as Strategy: The Asia-Pacific Case, 54 INT'L ORG. 549 (2000).
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transnational networks of government regulatorsor models of governance like environmental treaties' COPs and MOPs) or hybrid, not-quite-international models for international adjudication (such as the Special Court for Sierra Leone). Some suggested reforms start from the non-Grotian premise that multilateral rules produced by the representativesof the "international community" will not necessarily be morally superior to or more efficacious than, say, unilateral assertions of extraterritorialjurisdiction, bilateral treaties, or recourse to regional institutions or regional adjudication.133Various proposals attack IOs' increasing legislative, regulatory,or adjudicative prowess by urging restraintson the principle of implied powers, the permissible scope of delegated authority, or the interpretive gap-filling power of international Others propose greater or more creative recourse to concepts that are deferadjudicators.134 ential to or more protective of sovereignty (such as through doctrines permitting dismissal on procedural grounds, reliance on forms of subsidiarity, the principle of non liquet, and even a return to the Lotuspresumption), particularlyby adjudicatorswho are in a position to expand the regulatory effects of IO legal products.135 Some have suggested that IOs simply learn the lessons of"government failures"elsewhere and engage in less lawmaking by turning to the market or deregulation-as many states have done.136 The present state of 1O studies (and of IOs) lies in the eye of the beholder. For some, the glass is more than half empty. Deepening skepticism about the value of international institutionalization acrossthe political spectrum in the United States and among many in Europe and the global South can easily be portrayedas part and parcelof contemporary public international lawyers' "existential crisis"137-a loss of the turn-of-the-century idealism that gave rise to IOs in the first place. For others, perhaps the majority for whom the "heroic"138period of international law and institutions has not yet ended, the plethora of current proposals for institutional reform and alternatives to IO forms of governance suggest not buyers' remorse but healthy, if belated, recognition that the study of IOs should never be confused with their celebration.'39
133 Seegenerally Stephan,supranote 117. At the extreme,some democratic questionwhetherIOs sovereigntists whilereviving doubtsaboutthe bindingforceof international See,e.g.,JohnR. Bolton, aretrulynecessary, old law.
Is ThereReally "Law"in International Affairs? 10 TRANSNAT'L & CONTEMP. PROBS. 1 (2000) (arguing that L.
are treaties "politically" not "legally" but Seriously? binding);John R. Bolton, ShouldWe TakeGlobalGovernance 1 CHI.J. INT'L 205 (2000). Evensome of thosewho presumably L. with Bolton as to the legalnatureof disagree are treatiescontend that some formsof IO lawmaking uselessor pernicious.See,e.g., Stephan,supra. 134 See,e.g., CurtisA. International the and 55 Constitution, Non-Self-Execution, Bradley, Delegations, Structural
OF INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS 221, 231-32 (Jean-Marc Coicaud & Veijo Heiskanen eds., 2001). 135 Patrick at the WorldTrade
STAN.L. REV. 1557 (2003);Jan Klabbers, The ChangingImage ofInternational Organizations, in THE LEGITIMACY
Abstention by the International Court ofJustice, 18 MICH. J. INT'L L. 399 (1997). For the Lotus case, see 1927 PCIJ (ser. A) No. 10. 136 See, e.g., Klabbers, supra note 134, at 238. 137 Koskenniemi, supra note 99, at 230. 138 KOSKENNIEMI, supra note 2, at 511. 139 Two Robert O. Keohane, International Institutions: Approaches, INT'L STUD. Q. 379, 380 (1988). 32
See,e.g.,J. Kelly,JudicialActivism Organization: Developing Principles Self-Reof 22 L. and Virtues theWorld Court: straint, NW.J. INT'L & BUS.353 (2002);Antonio Perez,ThePassive Pro-dialogic