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Full-Text Articles in Law
Monitoring Compliance With Unratified Treaties: The Ilo Experience, Laurence R. Helfer
Monitoring Compliance With Unratified Treaties: The Ilo Experience, Laurence R. Helfer
Law and Contemporary Problems
Helfer challenges the conventional wisdom that the delegation of authority to the International Labor Organization (ILO) involves only modest sovereignty costs. Heifer explains that the ILO has increasingly exercised the authority to monitor compliance with unratified labor treaties and recommendations, and that the exercise of this authority has significant effects. He further notes that this type of monitoring authority is not confined to the ILO, but in fact exists in several other international institutions and issue areas. The case of the ILO therefore suggests that some important delegations arise and thrive outside of the formal channels of authority. This makes …
Delegation Success And Policy Failure: Collective Delegation And The Search For Iraqi Weapons Of Mass Destruction, Michael J. Tierney
Delegation Success And Policy Failure: Collective Delegation And The Search For Iraqi Weapons Of Mass Destruction, Michael J. Tierney
Law and Contemporary Problems
Tierney argues that international delegation can have important consequences, even for powerful states. In particular, he contends that the US delegation of inspection authority to United Nations weapons inspectors and to the International Atomic Energy Association after the Gulf War of 1990-91 entailed significant sovereignty costs by affecting the timing and costliness of the subsequent 2003 US invasion of Iraq. Among other things, he notes that the inspectors' independent behavior made it much more difficult for the US to assemble the type of multilateral coalition that would share the costs as it had in the earlier Gulf War. Tierney also …
The Globalization Of Health And Safety Standards: Delegation Of Regulatory Authority In The Sps Agreement Of The 1994 Agreement Establishing The World Trade Organization, Tim Buthe
Law and Contemporary Problems
Buthe examines why states delegated regulatory authority in the Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) Measures, an integral part of the founding treaty of the World Trade Organization (WTO). Buthe argues that, to explain this case of international delegation, principal-agent theory must be complemented by an analysis of cost-benefit calculations of the relevant domestic interest groups. Given these domestic interests, governments decided to institutionalize international cooperation on SPS measures outside of the WTO because they believed that such delegation would minimize the political costs of the loss of policymaking autonomy. Buthe notes, however, that in retrospect it …
Negotiate Or Litigate? Effects Of Wto Judicial Delegation On U.S. Trade Politics, Judith L. Goldstein, Richard H. Steinberg
Negotiate Or Litigate? Effects Of Wto Judicial Delegation On U.S. Trade Politics, Judith L. Goldstein, Richard H. Steinberg
Law and Contemporary Problems
Goldstein and Steinberg argue that the World Trade Organization Appellate Body has been able to use its authority to engage in judicial lawmaking to reduce trade barriers in ways that would not otherwise have been possible through negotiation. This lawmaking authority was not the result of a purposeful delegation; rather, it was an unintended byproduct of the creation of an underspecified set of rules and procedures. There is nevertheless a high rate of compliance with Appellate Body decisions because decentralized enforcement can induce domestic importers to lobby for trade liberalization. In the US, this judicial lawmaking may also allow the …