Transnational Lawmaking Coalitions is the first comprehensive analysis of the role and impact of informal collaborations in the UN human rights treaty bodies. Issues as central to international human rights as the right to water, abortion, torture, and hate speech are often only clarified through the instrument of treaty interpretations. This book dives beneath the surface of the formal access, procedures, and actors of the UN treaty body system to reveal how the experts and external collaborators play a key role in the development of human rights. Nina Reiners introduces the concept of 'Transnational Lawmaking Coalitions' within a novel theoretical framework and draws on a number of detailed case studies and original data. This study makes a significant contribution to the scholarship on human rights, transnational actors, and international organizations, and contributes to broader debates in international relations and international law.

Winner, 2022 ACUNS Book Award, Academic Council on the United Nations System

'Nina Reiners offers a fresh and insightful look into how ‘transnational lawmaking coalitions’ (TLCs) can expand the impact of human rights treaties. Composed of state-nominated experts and independent professionals, TLCs produce the general comments that sometimes open new domains of rights. The book tells the story of how expert bodies and unpaid issue professionals have expanded international human rights law. Reiners has illuminated a surprisingly little-known phenomenon.'

Wayne Sandholtz - University of Southern California

'While international organizations increasingly involve non-state actors, it has remained an open question whether and how such actors also influence law and politics. In this carefully researched book, Nina Reiners offers a novel and compelling account of how transnational coalitions of experts shape the interpretation of UN human rights treaties. A must-read for students of both international law and international relations.'

Jonas Tallberg - Stockholm University

'This volume offers fascinating insights into the norm power of independent experts, the dialectics of international law, and the expansion of rights through treaty bodies. The agency of transnational lawmaking coalitions offers hope for renewing the rights regime in a changing world.'

Alison Brysk - University of California, Santa Barbara

‘Reiners’ book is rich in detail and a real delight to read for anyone interested in the human rights machinery of the UN, the making and innovation of human rights law and the central protagonists behind this process. It opens up numerous fruitful and interesting lines of inquiry which will inspire new scholarship on international law, transnational elites and professionals, and the transformation of authority in international relations. With transnational lawmaking coalitions, Reiners has offered scholars a very interesting and apt concept which captures the heterogeneity of international human rights lawmaking.’

Alvina Hoffmann Source: Global Policy