Max Lesch

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Postdoctoral Researcher at Peace Research Institute Frankfurt

The United Nations treaty bodies were established to monitor the implementation of human rights by states parties. Through ‘General Comments’ – legally non-binding clarifications of treaty obligations – they have also influenced the development of international human rights law – for example, on the right to life and climate impacts. We address thi...

According to a widely shared perception, international peace and security law is in crisis. Yet it often remains unclear what the constitutive features of this crisis are, how novel it really is, and what its sources, forms, and effects are. In the introduction to this symposium, we unpack the current crisis narrative by focussing on norm contestat...

How do violations affect international norms? This article demonstrates that violations develop norms by analyzing how international institutions determine the meaning of deviant behavior and the breached norm. Decisions by courts, ad hoc tribunals, commissions of inquiry, and expert committees influence formal and informal lawmaking and drive the...

International Norm Disputes: The Link between Contestation and Norm Robustness offers a rich, comparative study of when and why contested international norms decline. It presents central findings on the link between contestation and norm robustness based on four detailed, contemporary case studies - the torture prohibition, the responsibility to pr...

International organizations (IOs) dispatch fact-finding missions to establish epistemic authority by objectively and impartially assessing contested facts. Despite this technocratic promise, they are often controversial and sometimes even fuel international disputes that challenge the epistemic authority of the dispatching organizations. Although t...

To what extent is the current “crisis of the liberal international order” a result of features of the order itself? In this article, we focus on the role of formal and informal hierarchies by comparing two cases of contestation of core norms of the liberal international order: The African states and the African Union contesting the duty to prosecut...

This book is an in-depth comparative study about when and why international norms decline when they are contested. It presents central findings on the link between contestation and norm robustness based on four contemporary case studies (the torture prohibition, the responsibility to protect, the duty to prosecute institutionalized in the Internati...

This book is an in-depth comparative study about when and why international norms decline when they are contested. It presents central findings on the link between contestation and norm robustness based on four contemporary case studies (the torture prohibition, the responsibility to protect, the duty to prosecute institutionalized in the Internati...

This book is an in-depth comparative study about when and why international norms decline when they are contested. It presents central findings on the link between contestation and norm robustness based on four contemporary case studies (the torture prohibition, the responsibility to protect, the duty to prosecute institutionalized in the Internati...

This book is an in-depth comparative study about when and why international norms decline when they are contested. It presents central findings on the link between contestation and norm robustness based on four contemporary case studies (the torture prohibition, the responsibility to protect, the duty to prosecute institutionalized in the Internati...

This book is an in-depth comparative study about when and why international norms decline when they are contested. It presents central findings on the link between contestation and norm robustness based on four contemporary case studies (the torture prohibition, the responsibility to protect, the duty to prosecute institutionalized in the Internati...

This book is an in-depth comparative study about when and why international norms decline when they are contested. It presents central findings on the link between contestation and norm robustness based on four contemporary case studies (the torture prohibition, the responsibility to protect, the duty to prosecute institutionalized in the Internati...

This book is an in-depth comparative study about when and why international norms decline when they are contested. It presents central findings on the link between contestation and norm robustness based on four contemporary case studies (the torture prohibition, the responsibility to protect, the duty to prosecute institutionalized in the Internati...

This book is an in-depth comparative study about when and why international norms decline when they are contested. It presents central findings on the link between contestation and norm robustness based on four contemporary case studies (the torture prohibition, the responsibility to protect, the duty to prosecute institutionalized in the Internati...

This book is an in-depth comparative study about when and why international norms decline when they are contested. It presents central findings on the link between contestation and norm robustness based on four contemporary case studies (the torture prohibition, the responsibility to protect, the duty to prosecute institutionalized in the Internati...

Based on an IR perspective, Chapter 6 by Max Lesch and Lisbeth Zimmermann examines a core value of the post-1945 international legal order: the prohibition of torture. This norm has come under pressure by the practices of torture and ill-treatment prevalent in some states and by state representatives’ reinterpretations and discursive contestations...

China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is a cornerstone of Xi Jinping's foreign policy. Chinese ministries, companies, and universities set up diplomatic networks, build roads and harbors, and facilitate scientific projects and educational programs to implement the BRI. Whereas some see the BRI as an integration project, others contend that it chal...

When normative aspirations and reality drift apart, they do not open a precarious gap but unveil a potentially productive difference. In this article, I suggest using the concept of deviance to study how international practices convey meaning between facts and norms. Taking fact-finding as an example, I show how epistemic practices in international...

In 2014, Germany became the 173rd state to ratify the UN Convention against Corruption (UNCAC) – after more than ten years of disputes in the German parliament. To make sense of the protracted debates about ratifying UNCAC, the article follows the recent introduction of Luc Boltanski’s pragmatic sociology to International Relations (IR). I argue th...

International Relations (IR) research on the translation and appropriation of international norms emphasises both the role of local agency and the fundamental malleability of norms. However, these perspectives cannot unlock the full agency of the governed as they limit agents’ effects on norms to incremental changes at the margins. We suggest trans...

The introduction of practice theories into International Relations (IR) promises new pathways to the study of world politics. This paper discusses how praxeological approaches can inform current debates in IR norm research. It introduces three specific approaches from the family of practice theory and their potential to enrich norm research: (1) Pi...