MPI Luxembourg

Sociological Perspectives on International Tribunals

Max Planck Institute Luxembourg for Procedural Law

The workshop will focus on sociological aspects of practices by international tribunals. Speakers will discuss diverse socio-cultural issues involved in the operation and impact of international tribunals as: the interactions between formal procedural rules and informal norms; the formal and social functions of tribunals; the symbolic aspects of tribunals’ proceedings and their decisions; the legal cultures (national and international ones) of international adjudication; the socio-cultural factors influencing the diffusion of procedural rules across international tribunals; and the production of knowledge and cognitive aspects of the work of such tribunals.

Thursday, 8 November 2018

10:00 Welcome and Greetings
Hélène Ruiz Fabri and Moshe Hirsch
10:15 Underlying Interactions between Tribunals & International Law
Chair: Sungjoon Cho
  • Hélène Ruiz Fabri, ‘Outline of a Sociological Theory of International Procedural Law’
  • Fuad Zarbiyev, ‘Extension du domaine de la lutte: A sociological account of convergence and discorde in international case law’
  • Andrew Lang, 'Global markets, local truths?: 'good regulatory practices' initiatives and the performance of markets in global governance'
  • Geoff Gordon, ‘Contradiction & the Court: Heterodox methods for analyses applied to the Iran-US case at the ICJ’
12:00 Lunch
13:30 Formal and Informal Functions
Chair: Mikael Madsen
  • Andrea Bianchi, ‘International judgments as holy writs’
  • Allan F. Tatham, ‘Punching Above its Weight’: Extra-forum Practices of the EFTA Court as a Means to Reinforce its International Standing’
  • Thilo Marauhn, ‘Contentious Cases in Disguise: ICJ Advisory Opinions as Drivers of Change’
  • Caroline Foster, ‘Making Representations: Societal Opinion in International Courts and Tribunals’
15:15 Coffee break
15:45 Socialization, Identity and Legitimacy
Chair: Hélène Ruiz Fabri
  • Edouard Fromageau, ‘The International Judges and the Others: A Comparative Study of Social Identities of Human Rights Adjudicators’
  • Mikael Madsen, ‘Ruling the world: Sociology of the International Judiciary’
  • Joshua Paine, ‘The Functions of the WTO’s Dispute Settlement Body’
  • Ksenia Polonskaya, ‘The Role of Media in Constructing Sociological Legitimacy of International Arbitration: Historical Perspective: The View From the Newspapers’’

Friday, 9 November 2018

9:00 Framing, Interpretation and Cognitive Biases
Chair: Andrew Lang
  • Ingo Venzke,  ‘An Extended Critique of International Adjudication [or The Path of International Law in Hindsight]’
  • Moshe Hirsch, ‘A New Phase in the Relationship between Investment Tribunals and International Human Rights Law?’
  • Mihreteab Taye, ‘Human Rights, the Rule of Law and the East African Court of Justice: Lawyers and the Emergence of a Weak Regional Field’
10:30 Coffee break
11:00 Judicial Practices and Rituals
Chair: Ron Levi
  • Ezgi Yildiz, ‘Enduring Practices in Changing Circumstances: A Comparison of the European Court of Human Rights and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights’
  • Jeffrey Dunoff & Mark Pollack, ‘The Shape of judgement’
  • Vincent Dalpé, ‘The Mass Atrocity Prosecution Ritual’
12:45 Lunch
14:15 Reconstructing Images and Historical Events
Chair: Moshe Hirsch
  • Sungjoon Cho & Jürgen Kurtz, ‘International Economic Law's Governance Trauma
  • Hisashi Harata, ‘Reconstructing International Commercial Arbitration in the 1920’s: Multiple Actors in a Transnational Field’
  • Ron Levi, ‘The mass media, international courts and the collective memory of the Holocaust’
16:00 Concluding Remarks and Farewell
Hélène Ruiz Fabri