Socializing States
posted by Robert Ahdieh
This past Saturday, I had the pleasure of spending the day at Temple Law School [not Tulane, Dave...], for what proved to be a fascinating workshop. Together with Jaya and other famous figures of the legal blogosphere – Duncan Hollis, Peggy McGuinness, Deb Pearlstein, Kim Scheppele, Peter Spiro, and David Zaring – as well as a stellar group of other legal academics and social scientists, we gathered to discuss a fascinating book manuscript by Ryan Goodman & Derek Jinks, entitled Socializing States: Promoting Human Rights Through International Law.
In the manuscript, Ryan and Derek draw on their prior work to offer an account of “acculturation” as a distinct mechanism by which norms are disseminated transnationally. Alongside more familiar patterns of coercion and persuasion, they suggest a tendency of states to align their behavior with common norms and practices, even where the latter are neither forced upon them by their material interests, nor accepted/internalized on the merits.
Obviously, a fascinating argument, which made for a rich discussion. As much as anything else, though, I write to highlight the format, which I thought made for a productive day. Each participant submitted written comments on the manuscript in advance, such that Ryan and Derek could comment on them as they chose, and we participants could effectively build on the comments offered by others.
This made for what I thought was a much closer analysis and critique than might otherwise have been accomplished. Further to that end, we also adopted the practice commonly credited to Mark Tushnet’s “conlaw schmooze,” in which each commenter chooses whom to call on for the next comment, rather than having a moderator maintain a queue, with its sometimes choppy quality.
In any case, I thought the program covered a lot of territory, in ways that might be well worth replicating, in other gatherings intended to explore on a particular manuscript or work-in-progress. I’ve already proposed that Emory think about developing some similar series of events.
October 7, 2008 at 6:11 pm
Posted in: International & Comparative Law
Print This Post
Leave a Reply