Institutionalizing Human Rights

On Tuesday, Temple's International Law Colloquium had the pleasure of hosting Galit Sarfaty (pictured left), Assistant Professor of Legal Studies and Business Ethics at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Galit presented her paper, Why Culture Matters in International Institutions: The Marginality of Human Rights at the World Bank, which was published in the October 2009 issue of the American Journal of International Law. (If you are an academic, that means that the article is already sitting on your desk somewhere, and it's well worth the effort to dig it out from under that pile of papers and read it!)
Trained as an anthropologist, Galit analyzes the rich and fascinating results of her doctoral research conducting an ethnography of the World Bank. Largely descriptive, the study seeks to answer the question of why the World Bank has failed to adopt a human rights policy or agenda. From interviews with James Wolfensohn to detailed analysis of the Bank's articles of agreement, the article is a riveting read that raises important questions about human rights standards and international organizations. Galit describes the thorny politics of the Bank's Board of Executive Directors, reflecting North/South struggles over the content and application of international human rights law. She suggests that the Bank's failure to adopt a human rights policy despite several attempts is due to the institution's organizational culture and the interpretive frames used by professional groups within the bank to assess new norms. Galit posits that
to bring about internalization, actors must adapt norms to local meanings and existing cultural values and practices -- that is, they must 'vernacularize' norms.
As explained in her presentation, the central take-away from her article is that human rights norms must be adapted to fit within the Bank's organizational culture, which prizes an economic approach above all else. Galit then poses the crucial question -- if we adapt human rights to this cultural context, will the norms become so diffuse that they will no longer have a significant impact? This is but one of many important thoughts provoked by her excellent article, which is well worth a read.

Read On! The Origins of African-American Interests in International Law

(Read On! ... occasional posts on writing worth reading)

In honor of the celebration of Black History Month, I recommend Henry J. Richardson III's excellent book: The Origins of African-American Interests in International Law (2008). In this wide-ranging and probing exploration, Richardson, a professor of international law at Temple Law School, identifies and tracks the interests of African-Americans and African-heritage people in international law. His examination begins with the presence of African-heritage people in the New World before the arrival of the Jamestown Twenty, and continues up to and including the War of 1812.

Using the framework and theories of the New Haven School, Richardson deploys a detailed and thorough knowledge of history and international law to probe the "what ifs." That is, if the African-American and African-heritage people of those different eras had had access to the theories, international law conceptions, social institutions, and lawyers, what are the claims that they would have made in regard to their enslavement and subordination. How would they have advocated that international law be defined and interpretated? Acknowledging the necessarily speculative nature of some of his claims, throughout the this masterful work, Richardson demonstrates a passion for American and international legal history and responds to any potential skeptism regarding the interests, claims and stakes of the subordinated African-Americans and African-heritage peoples in the evolution and development of international law. Richardson ends with an invitation for further research.

Read this book, and respond to the two challenges: to learn more about African-American history and the implications for international law AND to be inspired to delve into further research on these topics.

The Grrls Are Back in Town

Today, Temple Law School hosts the annual Junior International Law Scholars' (JILS)conference. Created several years ago by Rosa Ehrenreich Brooks and Tim Wu, JILS aims to establish a safe space for its members, pre-tenure and recently tenured international law scholars, to present and receive feedback on works-in-progress, as well as to ensure friendly dialogue between scholars with differing perspectives on the international law project. Today's workshop, organized by IntLawGrrls guest blogger Chimène Keitner (right) and David Zaring, and hosted by yours truly, will also be something of an IntLawGrrls reunion.

There's lots of good stuff on the agenda, including IntLawGrrl Karen Bravo's (left) paper Transborder Labor Liberalization: A Path to Enforcement of the Global Social Contract for Labor?, in which she argues from an economic as well as a human rights perspective that free movement of labor is appropriate and necessary in our globalized economy. We also have IntLawGrrl Hari Osofsky (below right) presenting her work-in-progress, Diagonal Climate Regulation: Implications for the Obama Administration, in which she examines the potential approaches the new administration could take to enforcing environmental regulations and presents a path forward aimed at integrating entities at different levels of government, thereby creating cross-cutting synergies; IntLawGrrl Rebecca Bratspies will comment. I will also discuss my current paper, Resolving Dueling Legitimacies: Buying Into Transitional Justice Mechanisms, which critically examines currently favored transitional justice mechanisms and suggests a new approach that emphasizes the needs and interests of societies afflicted by mass violence; IntLawGrrl guest blogger Meg DeGuzman will comment. Finally, IntLawGrrl guest blogger Jenia Iontcheva Turner (left) will present an early stage work-in-progress on ethical issues faced by international criminal defense lawyers, and how professional responsibility should be regulated in internationalized criminal courts. And of course, there are plenty of other interesting papers on topics as varied as the right to property in international law, federalism and foreign affairs, and comparative employment discrimination law. Wish you were here!

Courting Genocide?

This week, Peter Spiro and I hosted Jide Nzelibe (pictured below left) at Temple's International Law Colloquium. Jide presented his work-in-progress, Courting Genocide: The Unintended Effects of Humanitarian Intervention, on which Kristen Boon (pictured below right) provided commentary. While I had several smaller quibbles and a few larger criticisms of the paper, it moves the scholarship on humanitarian intervention a step forward, as Kristen noted, by examining the motivations of all of the actors involved and suggesting that the effects of humanitarian intervention may not always be benign. Jide's basic thesis is as follows:

because humanitarian interventions tend to increase the chance that rebel or victim group leaders are going to achieve their preferred political objectives, such leaders might have an incentive to engage in the kinds of provocative actions that make atrocities against their followers more likely in the first place.

Ambitious in scope and provocative in intent, the paper's descriptive portion is compelling in generalities but more troubling in specifics. Jide's point that “[t]he threat of humanitarian intervention influence[s] the calculus of both rebel leaders and perpetrators in complex and unpredictable ways” is powerful; the idea that humanitarian intervention influences rebels to subject their followers to the risks of genocidal violence is much more of a stretch. It seems more likely that rebel groups have imperfect information about both the risk of genocide and the chance of humanitarian intervention, which may surely influence their actions, but in perhaps less predictable and nefarious ways.
As Jide himself concedes, the prescriptive portion of the paper presents solutions that may be difficult to implement in the real world. He suggests two options for addressing rebel leaders who engaged in provocative behavior against dominant groups who then perpetrated atrocities against their kin: first, applying a comparative fault framework to reduce economic and political benefits to these leaders, and second, absolving perpetrators from international criminal law sanctions through the defense of provocation. Both approaches troubled me most for their paternalism; the first because it's unclear who should decide and how they should decide when behavior has been sufficiently provocative to warrant a reduction in benefits, and the second because it's simply too close to the "she asked for it" defense. In my mind, provocation is no justification for the types of atrocities Jide discusses in his paper. A better normative outcome might instead be more even-handed prosecution of all players who commit atrocities, not just those responsible for the worst atrocities. In any case, despite these quibbles, the paper's worth a read for its thought-provoking approach to a timely and important issue.

Cross-posted on Concurring Opinions.