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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 October 2020
International tribunal backlash remains poorly understood: hampered by conceptual challenges, systematic research into the causes of this phenomenon remains nascent. The present article makes two contributions to advancing this endeavour. First, building on existing literature, it sets out a working definition of international tribunal backlash, tailored to facilitate mixed method empirical research into the causes of backlash across institutions and sectors. Second, drawing on international relations’ pluralist turn, the article provides an analytically eclectic theoretical scaffold for causal analysis of international tribunal backlash, enabling standardised cross-institutional and sectoral comparison without over-simplifying the complexity of backlash in various instances. The article accordingly provides the building blocks for improved understanding of the causes of – and the potential scope to manage – international tribunal backlash across institutions, regions and sectors.
I am grateful to Anne van Aaken, Franzizka Boehme, Geoff Dancy, Pierre d'Argent, Cian O'Driscoll, Kevin Jon Heller, Courtney Hillebrecht, Frédéric Mégret, Kurt Mills, Ian Paterson, Ty Solomon, Scott Strauss, Christian Tams, Shaina Western, and anonymous reviewers for helpful comments and discussions, as well as panellists and participants at the 2018 ESIL Research Forum and ISA Conference.
1 Shany, Yuval, ‘Assessing the Effectiveness of International Courts: A Goal-Based Approach’ (2012) 106 American Journal of International Law 225, 226CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Kent and co-authors observe similarly that ‘the existence of [international courts] is a condition sine qua non for the proper functioning of a rule-based international order’: Kent, Avidan, Skoutaris, Nikos and Trinidad, Jamie, ‘What Does the Future Hold for International Courts?’ in Kent, Avidan, Skoutaris, Nikos and Trinidad, Jamie (eds), The Future of International Courts: Regional, Institutional and Procedural Challenges (Routledge 2018) 1, 7Google Scholar.
2 Alter refers to ‘the end of the liberal consensus’: Karen J Alter, ‘Critical Junctures and the Future of International Courts in a Post-Liberal World Order’ in Kent, Skoutaris and Trinidad (n 1) 8, 19.
3 The terms ‘tribunal’ and ‘court’ are used interchangeably in this article to refer to what may be considered more broadly as ‘international adjudicative bodies’: see Romano, Cesare PR, Alter, Karen J and Shany, Yuval, ‘Mapping International Adjudicative Bodies, the Issues, and Players’ in Romano, Cesare PR, Alter, Karen J and Shany, Yuval (eds), The Oxford University Press Handbook of International Adjudication (Oxford University Press 2013) 3, 6Google Scholar.
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6 See detailed discussion in Section 2.1 below in respect of the experiences of these bodies.
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13 International tribunal legitimacy and authority are, of course, themselves the subjects of extensive normative and analytic debate. For recent contributions see, eg, Grossman and others (n 11); Alter, Helfer and Madsen (n 4).
14 For examples of techniques used by courts to facilitate this endeavour, see Dyevre, Arthur, ‘Uncertainty and International Adjudication’ (2019) 32 Leiden Journal of International Law 131CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Odermatt, Jed, ‘Patterns of Avoidance: Political Questions before International Courts’ (2018) 14 International Journal of Law in Context 221CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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17 Alter (n 2) 19.
18 Leslie Vinjamuri, ‘The International Criminal Court: The Paradox of Its Authority’ in Alter, Helfer and Madsen (n 4) 331.
19 Mills, Kurt and Bloomfield, Alan, ‘African Resistance to the International Criminal Court: Halting the Advance of the Anti-Impunity Norm’ (2018) 44 Review of International Studies 101CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In similar vein, Clifford has documented the international impact of non-liberal transnational activist communities: Clifford, Bob, The Global Right Wing and the Clash of World Politics (Cambridge University Press 2012)Google Scholar.
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24 Lang, Andrew, ‘Protectionism's Many Faces’ (2018) 44 Yale Journal of International Law Online 54, 57Google Scholar.
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27 Sandholtz, Bei and Caldwell (n 26) 166. See, eg, ECtHR, Hirst v UK (No. 2), App no 74025/01, 6 October 2005, and subsequent cases on prisoner voting rights, eg, ECtHR, Omar Othman (Abu Qatada) v UK, App no 8139/09, 17 January 2012, and in respect of Russia, ECtHR, Anchugov and Gladov v Russia, App nos 11157/04 and 15162/05, 4 July 2013 (again, on prisoner voting), and ECtHR, OAO Neftyanaya Kompaniya Yukos v Russia, App no 14902/04, 31 July 2014.
28 See variously Philip Leach and Alice Donald, ‘Hostility to the European Court and the Risks of Contagion’, UK Human Rights Blog, 21 November 2013, https://ukhumanrightsblog.com/2013/11/21/hostility-to-the-european-court-and-the-risks-of-contagion-philip-leach-and-alice-donald; Harzl, Benedikt, ‘Nativist Ideological Responses to European/Liberal Human Rights Discourses in Contemporary Russia’ in Mälksoo, Lauri and Benedek, Wolfgang (eds), Russia and the European Court of Human Rights: The Strasbourg Effect (Cambridge University Press 2017) 355Google Scholar; Helfer, Laurence R, ‘The Successes and Challenges for the European Court, Seen from the Outside’ (2014) 108 AJIL Unbound 74CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Iryna Marchuk and Marina Aksenova, ‘The Tale of Yukos and of the Russian Constitutional Court's Rebellion against the European Court of Human Rights’ (2017) Osservatorio Costituzionale; Madsen (n 26) 172.
29 See Legal Consequences of the Construction of a Wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Advisory Opinion [2004] ICJ Rep 136; Legal Consequences of the Separation of the Chagos Archipelago from Mauritius in 1965, Advisory Opinion [2019] ICJ Rep 1.
30 The South China Sea Arbitration (Republic of the Philippines/ People's Republic of China), PCA, Award of 12 July 2016, available at: https://pca-cpa.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/175/2016/07/PH-CN-20160712-Award.pdf. See also Graham Allison, ‘Of Course China, Like All Great Powers, Will Ignore an International Legal Verdict’, The Diplomat, 11 July 2016, https://thediplomat.com/2016/07/of-course-china-like-all-great-powers-will-ignore-an-international-legal-verdict.
31 ‘Brexit: Theresa May Says UK Leaving EU Court's Jurisdiction’, BBC News, 23 August 2017, https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-41012265. See also Nikos Skoutaris, ‘Taking Back Control? Brexit and the Court of Justice’ in Kent, Skoutaris and Trinidad (n 1) 93.
32 ‘When the governments could not reconcile this strong domestic preference for capital punishment with their international commitment to allow defendants to petition the human rights tribunals, they withdrew from the treaties’: Helfer (n 5) 1910. Also, Amnesty International, ‘Caribbean: Unacceptably Limiting Human Rights Protection’, 1 March 1999, AMR 05/001/99, https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/document/?indexNumber=amr05%2f001%2f1999&language=en.
33 Rachel Glickhouse, ‘Prior to Election, Venezuela Begins IACHR Withdrawal’, Americas Society/Council of the Americas (blog), 12 September 2012, https://www.as-coa.org/articles/prior-election-venezuela-begins-iachr-withdrawal. See discussions in Jorge Contesse, ‘Judicial Backlash in Inter-American Human Rights Law?’, I-CONnect (blog of the International Journal of Constitutional Law), 2 March 2017, http://www.iconnectblog.com/2017/03/judicial-backlash-interamerican; Jorge Contesse, ‘Inter-American Constitutionalism and Judicial Backlash’, Draft for SELA 2017 Conference, 2017, https://edisciplinas.usp.br/pluginfile.php/3953176/mod_resource/content/1/sela17_Jorge%20Contesse_cv_eng.pdf; Huneeus, Alexandra, ‘Rejecting the Inter-American Court: Judicialization, National Courts, and Regional Human Rights’ in Couso, Javier, Huneeus, Alexandra and Sieder, Rachel (eds), Cultures of Legality: Judicialization and Political Activism in Latin America (Cambridge University Press 2010) 112Google Scholar.
34 Simone Baribeau, ‘Chavez: Venezuela to Withdraw from Andean Community of Nations’, Venezuelanalysis.Com (blog), 21 April 2006, https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/1706; ‘Venezuela Withdraws from Andean Trade Pact’, United Press International (blog), 22 April 2011, https://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2011/04/22/Venezuela-withdraws-from-Andean-trade-pact/55211303497073.
35 ‘Rwanda Withdraws Access to African Court for Individuals and NGOs’, International Justice Resource Center, 14 March 2016, https://ijrcenter.org/2016/03/14/rwanda-withdraws-access-to-african-court-for-individuals-and-ngos; see also Tom Daly and Micha Wiebusch, ‘The African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights: Mapping Resistance Against a Young Court’, https://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=3135130.
36 On withdrawals from investment treaties and associated implications see Peinhardt, Clint and Wellhausen, Rachel L, ‘Withdrawing from Investment Treaties but Protecting Investment’ (2016) 7 Global Policy 571CrossRefGoogle Scholar. More generally, see Waibel, Michael and others, ‘The Backlash Against Investment Arbitration: Perceptions and Reality’ in Waibel, Michael and others (eds), The Backlash Against Investment Arbitration (Kluwer Law International 2010) 339Google Scholar.
37 cf, eg, Alter, Gathii and Helfer (n 4); Ryan Brutger and Anton Strezhnev, ‘International Disputes, Media Coverage, and Backlash Against International Law’, 21 May 2018, https://cpb-us-w2.wpmucdn.com/web.sas.upenn.edu/dist/f/164/files/2018/07/Paper_5-21-2018-2j16nmg.pdf; Leslie Vinjamuri, ‘Human Rights Backlash’ in Hopgood, Snyder and Vinjamuri (n 12) 114; Achiume (n 4).
38 See, eg, Grossman and others (n 11); Kent, Skoutaris and Trinidad (n 1).
39 See Alter, Karen J, Helfer, Laurence R and Madsen, Mikael Rask (eds), ‘Special Issue: The Variable Authority of International Courts’ (2016) 79 Law and Contemporary ProblemsGoogle Scholar; Alter, Helfer and Madsen (n 4); Madsen, Mikael Rask, Cebulak, Pola and Wiebusch, Micha, ‘Backlash against International Courts: Explaining the Forms and Patterns of Resistance to International Courts’ (2018) 14 (Special Issue 2 Resistance to International Courts) International Journal of Law in Context 197CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and related contributions in that issue.
40 Karen J Alter, Laurence R Helfer and Mikael Rask Madsen, ‘Conclusion: Context, Authority, Power’ in Alter, Helfer and Madsen (n 4) 435.
41 Karen J Alter, Laurence R Helfer and Mikael Rask Madsen, ‘International Court Authority in a Complex World’ in Alter, Helfer and Madsen (n 4) 3, 13. As put by McCourt, ‘[p]ractice theory draws attention to everyday logics in world politics. It contends that actors are driven less by abstract forces—such as the national interest, preferences, and social norms—than by practical imperatives, habits, and embodied dispositions’: McCourt, David, ‘Practice Theory and Relationalism as the New Constructivism’ (2016) 60 International Studies Quarterly 475CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
42 Madsen, Cebulak and Wiebusch (n 39) 199.
43 eg, Alter, Karen J, ‘The European Union's Legal System and Domestic Policy: Spillover or Backlash?’ (2000) 54 International Organization 489CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sikkink, Kathryn, ‘The United States and Torture: Does the Spiral Model Work?’ in Risse, Thomas, Ropp, Stephen C and Sikkink, Kathryn (eds), The Persistent Power of Human Rights: From Commitment to Compliance (Cambridge University Press 2013) 150Google Scholar. There is also a developing line of research examining the ‘politics of backlash’: see Karen J Alter and Michael Zürn, ‘Backlash Politics: Introduction to a Symposium on Backlash Politics in Comparison’, British Journal of Politics and International Relations (forthcoming), https://ssrn.com/abstract=3481735; Karen J Alter and Michael Zürn, ‘Theorizing Backlash Politics’, British Journal of Politics and International Relations (forthcoming), https://ssrn.com/abstract=3493079.
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46 Madsen, Cebulak and Wiebusch (n 39) 203.
47 Sandholtz, Bei and Caldwell (n 26) 160.
48 Vinjamuri (n 37) 120. Terman similarly refers to norm ‘defiance’ – characterised as ‘the net increase in the commitment to or incidence of norm-offending behavior caused by a defensive reaction to norm sanctioning’: Rochelle Terman, ‘Rewarding Resistance: Theorizing Defiance to International Norms’, Center for International Security & Cooperation, Stanford University, August 2017, 5, http://rochelleterman.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/4b_Defiance.pdf.
49 Sandholtz, Bei and Caldwell (n 26) 160.
50 Madsen, Cebulak and Wiebusch (n 39) 209.
51 Hofmann, Andreas, ‘Resistance against the Court of Justice of the European Union’ (2018) 14 International Journal of Law in Context 258, 259CrossRefGoogle Scholar (‘The CJEU hardly topped the list of villains in the “Leave” camp’).
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59 Shany (n 1).
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61 Madsen, Cebulak and Wiebusch (n 39) 215.
62 Alter, Helfer and Madsen (n 40) 452.
63 eg, Alter, Gathii and Helfer (n 4); Boehme (n 20); Helfer (n 5); Helfer, Laurence R and Showalter, Anne E, ‘Opposing International Justice: Kenya's Integrated Backlash Strategy against the ICC’ (2017) 17 International Criminal Law Review 1CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lovat (n 57); Marks, Susan, ‘Backlash: The Undeclared War against Human Rights’ (2014) 4 European Human Rights Law Review 319Google Scholar; Sandholtz, Bei and Caldwell (n 26); Soley and Steininger (n 56); Øyvind Stiansen and Erik Voeten, ‘Backlash and Judicial Restraint: Evidence from the European Court of Human Rights’, SSRN ELibrary, 17 August 2018, https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3166110.
64 Alter (n 2) 21.
65 eg, Alter, Gathii and Helfer (n 4).
66 eg, Mills and Bloomfield (n 19).
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73 Sil and Katzenstein, ‘Analytic Eclecticism in the Study of World Politics’ (n 69) 412.
74 The extent to which tribunal backlash may reflect a multiplicity of institutional, constituency and political contextual factors, and the challenge in making sense of these in the absence of an ex ante theoretical lens, may be seen in the recognition by Alter, Helfer and Madsen that the framework of eight ‘contextual’ factors they identify as having a bearing on tribunal authority ‘is only illustrative rather than exhaustive and points to the overlap and interdependence across different categories of context’: Karen J Alter, Laurence R Helfer and Mikael Rask Madsen, ‘How Context Shapes the Authority of International Courts’ in Alter, Helfer and Madsen (n 4) 24, 36.
75 Kristensen, Peter Marcus, ‘International Relations at the End: A Sociological Autopsy’ (2018) 62 International Studies Quarterly 245Google Scholar. Kristensen refers to realist, liberal institutionalist, and constructivist ‘isms’: these categories, however, may, of course, be debated – and indeed, the second is reconfigured and disaggregated for present purposes, reflecting the prominence of ‘liberal’ theorising in international law scholarship.
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79 Rodman (n 20). See in similar vein Bosco, David, Rough Justice: The International Criminal Court's Battle to Fix the World, One Prosecution at a Time (Oxford University Press 2013)Google Scholar.
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82 Abebe and Ginsburg (n 16).
83 On constructivism generally see, eg, Emanuel Adler, ‘Constructivism in International Relations: Sources, Contributions and Debates’ in Carlsnaes, Risse and Simmons (n 67) 112; Ian Hurd, ‘Constructivism’ in Reus-Smit and Snidal (n 76) 298; Wendt, Alexander, ‘Anarchy Is What States Make of It: The Social Construction of Power Politics’ (1992) 46 International Organization 391CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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85 Katzenstein, Peter J, ‘Introduction: Alternative Perspectives on National Security’ in Katzenstein, Peter J (ed), The Culture of National Security: Norms and Identity in World Politics (Columbia University Press 1996) 5Google Scholar.
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87 As put by Fehl, the ‘constructivist moment’ here lies ‘in the process of persuasion, which contradicts the rationalist assumption that states act on the basis of fixed preferences’: Fehl, Caroline, ‘Explaining the International Criminal Court: A “Practice Test” for Rationalist and Constructivist Approaches’ (2004) 10 European Journal of International Relations 357, 366CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
88 Katzenstein and Okawara observe, eg, that ‘[t]he redefinition of collective identities … is a process measured in decades, not years … Collective identity is [often] therefore less directly at stake than are trust and reputation’: Katzenstein and Okawara (n 68) 174.
89 Bates, Elizabeth Stubbins, ‘Sophisticated Constructivism in Human Rights Compliance Theory’ (2014) 25 European Journal of International Law 1169, 1179CrossRefGoogle Scholar. This term, it should be noted, is itself contested: see, eg, differing visions in Finnemore and Sikkink (n 86); Johnston, Alastair Iain, Social States: China in International Institutions, 1980–2000 (Princeton University Press 2014) 20, 155, 165Google Scholar.
90 On the extent to which norm entrepreneurship can be affected and/or facilitated or constrained by the broader ‘Zeitgeist’, see Lovat (n 67). See also related literature on the impact of a shared normative ‘lifeworld’ on international lawmaking, especially Risse, Thomas, ‘“Let's Argue!”: Communicative Action in World Politics’ (2003) 54 International Organization 1Google Scholar. As Risse notes elsewhere, ‘[t]he common lifeworld provides arguing actors with a repertoire of collective understandings to which they can refer when making truth claims’: Risse, Thomas, ‘Global Governance and Communicative Action’ (2004) 39 Government and Opposition 288, 296CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Habermas, Jürgen, The Divided West (Cronin, Ciaran tr, Polity Press 2006) 115, 119Google Scholar.
91 See related discussion in Lovat (n 67) Ch 1.
92 Alter, Gathii and Helfer (n 4).
93 Mills and Bloomfield (n 19). See in similar vein Clifford (n 19).
94 See, eg, von Borzyskowski, Inken and Vabulas, Felicity, ‘Hello, Goodbye: When Do States Withdraw from International Organizations?’ (2019) 14 The Review of International Organizations 335CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
95 Alter (n 2) 28–32.
96 Bryce Baschuk, ‘US Raises Prospect of Blocking Passage of WTO Budget’, Bloomberg, 12 November 2019, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-11-12/u-s-is-said-to-raise-prospect-of-blocking-passage-of-wto-budget.
97 Alderson, Kai, ‘Making Sense of State Socialization’ (2001) 27 Review of International Studies 415CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Finnemore and Sikkink (n 86).
98 See Moravcsik, Andrew, ‘Liberal International Relations Theory: A Scientific Assessment’ in Elman, Colin and Elman, Miriam Fendius (eds), Progress in International Relations Theory: Appraising the Field (The MIT Press 2003) 159Google Scholar; Andrew Moravcsik, ‘Liberalism and International Relations Theory’, Center for International Affairs, Harvard University, 1992; Moravcsik, Andrew, ‘Taking Preferences Seriously: A Liberal Theory of International Politics’ (1997) 51 International Organization 513CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Andrew Moravcsik, ‘The New Liberalism’ in Reus-Smit and Snidal (n 76) 234; Slaughter, Anne-Marie, A New World Order (Princeton University Press 2004)Google Scholar.
99 Anne-Marie Slaughter and Thomas Hale, ‘International Relations, Principal Theories’, Max Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law, September 2013, para 17.
100 See, eg, Moravcsik, Andrew, ‘The Origins of Human Rights Regimes: Democratic Delegation in Postwar Europe’ (2000) 54 International Organization 217CrossRefGoogle Scholar; also Simmons, Beth, Mobilizing for Human Rights: International Law in Domestic Politics (Cambridge University Press 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
101 Bass, Gary J, Freedom's Battle: The Origins of Humanitarian Intervention (Knopf 2008)Google Scholar; Bass, Gary J, Stay the Hand of Vengeance: The Politics of War Crimes Tribunals (Princeton University Press 2002)Google Scholar.
102 Alter, Helfer and Madsen (n 74).
103 Posner, Eric A, ‘Liberal Internationalism and the Populist Backlash’ (2017) 49 Arizona State Law Journal 795Google Scholar; Caron and Shirlow (n 56); Waibel and others (n 36). Recent work by Alter and Zürn (n 43) similarly highlights the role of public discourse in the broader ‘politics of backlash’.
104 Brutger and Strezhnev (n 37); Vinjamuri (n 37) 127. Also discussions variously in Leach and Donald (n 28); Harzl (n 28); Helfer (n 28); Marchuk and Aksenova (n 28); Madsen (n 26) 172.
105 Abduction may be understood as ‘neither deduction nor induction but a dialectical combination of the two … supplement(ing) … deductive arguments with inductively derived insights’: Finnemore, Martha, The Purpose of Intervention: Changing Beliefs about the Use of Force (Cornell Studies in Security Affairs, Cornell University Press 2003) 13Google Scholar.
106 Chandler, Daniel and Munday, Rod, Dependent and Independent Variables (Oxford University Press 2016)Google Scholar.
107 Lovat (n 57).
108 Andrew Bennett and Alexander L George, ‘Process Tracing in Case Study Research’, paper presented at the MacArthur Foundation Workshop on Case Study Methods, Harvard University, 17–19 October 1997, 5.
109 Waltz (n 76) 10.
110 Seva Gunitsky, ‘Rival Visions of Parsimony’ (2019) 63 International Studies Quarterly 707, 711.
111 As observed by Carr, ‘[i]t used to be said that facts speak for themselves. This is, of course, untrue. The facts speak only when the historian calls on them’: EH Carr, What Is History? (2nd edn, Penguin 1990) 11 (cited in Gunitsky (n 110) fn 17).
112 eg, Feaver and others (n 78).
113 eg, McCourt (n 41). Also, for broader international law and international relations perspectives see, eg, Andrew Linklater, ‘The English School’ in Scott Burchill and others (n 76) 84; Hathaway, Oona and Koh, Harold Hongju, Foundations of International Law and Politics (Foundation Press 2005)Google Scholar; Dunoff, Jeffrey and Pollack, Mark (eds), Interdisciplinary Perspectives on International Law and International Relations: The State of the Art (Cambridge University Press 2013)Google Scholar. Clarke's recent work on the role of affect on conceptions of justice in Africa in the context of the ICC provides a further avenue for exploration by IL/IR scholars: Clarke, Kamari Maxine, Affective Justice: The International Criminal Court and the Pan-Africanist Pushback (Duke University Press 2019)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
114 Sil and Katzenstein refer to eclecticism as reflecting a ‘pragmatist ethos’ – ‘a flexible approach that needs to be tailored to a given problem and to existing debates over aspects of this problem’: Sil and Katzenstein, Beyond Paradigms: Analytic Eclecticism in the Study of World Politics (n 69) 3, 17.
115 Cassese, eg, recognised the concern that the ‘Cassese approach’ – ‘judges overdoing, becoming dangerous by, say, producing judgments that can be innovative’ – engendered in the drafters of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (entered into force 1 July 2002) 2187 UNTS 90: Cassese, Antonio, ‘The Judge: Interview with Antonio Cassese’ in Stuart, Heikelina Verrijn and Simons, Marlise, The Prosecutor and the Judge: Benjamin Ferencz and Antonio Cassese, Interviews and Writings (Amsterdam University Press 2009) 52–53Google Scholar.
116 Alter, Helfer and Madsen (n 40) 447.
117 Dancy, Geoff, ‘Searching for Deterrence at the International Criminal Court’ (2017) 17 International Criminal Law Review 625, 655CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
118 As put by Madsen and co-authors, ‘the critical input of governments or civil society actors might in the long run be beneficial to them, as it provides information – legal or political – that they might otherwise not have been aware of. In that sense, critique of [international courts] – even harsh critique from failed backlash attempts – might help the [court] in the long run’: Madsen, Cebulak and Wiebusch (n 39) 217.
119 ‘[R]esistance to [courts] may be a deeply democratic phenomenon, an effort to reclaim national control over issues of central importance’: Alter (n 2) 21.
120 As noted, eg, by Harlan Grant Cohen and others, ‘Legitimacy and International Courts – A Framework’ in Grossman and others (n 11) 1, 7 (‘[t]o the extent that standards of global justice apply to all international actors, they may affect how judges in international courts should reason when interpreting vague terms and specifying the treaty obligations and may create a tension between legal legitimacy based on an interpretation of the obligations as set out in the treaty and justice-based legitimacy’). On legitimacy capital and related concepts of international court normative and sociological legitimacy see Cohen and others, ibid 4–9. See also Yuval Shany, ‘Stronger Together? Legitimacy and Effectiveness of International Courts as Mutually Reinforcing or Undermining Notions’ in Grossman and others, ibid 354; and, in respect of international court authority, Alter, Helfer and Madsen (n 41) 5–14.
121 Indeed, this approach may conceivably be adapted to assist policy actors concerned about the sustainability of other elements of the rules-based order in what appears to be an increasingly turbulent international political, economic and security environment. In similar fashion, enhanced understanding of the drivers of tribunal backlash may equally facilitate the work of those who seek to further undermine such institutions.
