Law Commons^™

Toward An Identity Theory Of International Organizations, Sungjoon Cho

All Faculty Scholarship

Conventional international relations (IR) theorists, such as realists, neo-functionalists or regime theorists, view international organizations (IOs) as passive tools with which to achieve certain goals. Although an IO may facilitate inter-state cooperation and reduce transaction costs, it does not have a life of its own. Therefore, conventional IR theorists focus mostly on the creation of an IO and inter-state cooperation leading up to the creation. As a result, an IO's institutional change remains rather an “under-studied” and “under-theorized” issue in the conventional international relations (IR) framework.

Granted, conventional IR theories may provide useful insights on an inter-national dynamic among creators …

Toward A New Economic Constitution: Judicial Disciplines On Trade Politics, Sungjoon Cho

All Faculty Scholarship

This article first observes that protectionism is an icon of trade politics and thus likely to gather fresh momentum as a domestic election approaches. The paper then problematizes protectionism beyond mere seasonal election politics by revealing its fatal pathologies both to the United States and to the rest of the world. Protectionism basically caters to the special interest at the expense of the larger public interest, which may be coined as a Madisonian constitutional failure. It also deviates from global trading norms, which the United States hypocritically continues to preach adherence to for the rest of the world. This double …