Shai Dothan

University of Copenhagen · Faculty of Law

Interdisciplinary analysis of law is a powerful tool for analyzing a variety of legal problems. The strength of interdisciplinarity is its ability to unveil significant factors that remain hidden when seen solely within disciplinary boundaries. This symposium aims to focus on the analytic abilities of interdisciplinarity when exploring European law...

Insights from Social Network Analysis reveal that the structure of the social network surrounding international courts is important for these courts’ ability to secure compliance with their judgments and by this to initiate social change. International courts like the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) invest growing resources in shaping their...

The forms of intervention of international courts in domestic affairs could be divided into three broad paradigms: (1) the Westphalian Paradigm, (2) the Hierarchical Paradigm, (3) the Network Paradigm. According to the Westphalian Paradigm, the role of international courts is to coordinate the interactions of sovereign states. According to the Hier...

This handbook is currently in development, with individual articles publishing online in advance of print publication. At this time, we cannot add information about unpublished articles in this handbook, however the table of contents will continue to grow as additional articles pass through the review process and are added to the site. Please note...

I. The contested argument Adam Chilton and Mila Versteeg present in How Constitutional Rights Matter a rich set of empirical findings. The aim of their project is an investigation into the conditions under which constitutional protection of human rights translates to actual respect for these rights by state authorities. They find that for many righ...

The paper suggests a novel methodology for determining the state of legal doctrine on a particular issue by legal scholars. This methodology is inspired by the philosophical field of phenomenology. In particular, the tool of eidetic reduction developed by Edmund Husserl is applied to reach inter-subjectively valid assessments of doctrine. The metho...

This paper examines the impact of radical institutional reforms on long-term development of property rights and on institutions regulating contracting. The paper demonstrates that the Mexican-American War (1846-1848) had a significant effect on the institutional development of Mexico. The war partially removed the legal and economic barriers that p...

This Symposium Issue looks at how personal traits of international judges matter in their judging. The articles selected shed light on the ways that international judges’ personality, that is, their character differences and personal backgrounds, shape, control, or modify their conduct and their rulings. The articles in the Symposium reveal that in...

This article explores the phenomenon of judicial dissents at the ICC. The main subject is the process of collective decision-making and judicial deliberations in cases where members of a particular ICC chamber cannot reach a consensus on factual, substantive or procedural issues and render a unanimous decision. The article examines why and when int...

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) searches for human rights policies that are adopted by the majority of the countries in Europe. Using a doctrine known as "emerging consensus," the court then imposes these policies as an international legal obligation on all the countries under its jurisdiction. But the ECHR sometimes defers to countries,...

In an article published a few years ago, my friend Jakob Holtermann compared the International Criminal Court (ICC) to a slice of Swiss cheese. The metaphor is meant to indicate that the ICC operates as a filter that deters some of the criminals left undeterred by national criminal law systems. This is true. But the metaphor also suggests that the...

Recently, several court-like mechanisms have been considered as a substitute for investor-state arbitration. Suggestions for creating such mechanisms have been around for a long time, but new trade agreements may make court-like mechanisms for investors’ disputes a reality. This paper starts by asking whether the shift from arbitration to court-lik...

Cambridge Core - Public International Law - International Judicial Review - by Shai Dothan

This special issue focuses on the opportunities and challenges connected with investment courts. The creation of permanent investment courts was first proposed several decades ago, but it has only recently become likely that these proposals will be implemented. In particular, the European Commission has pushed for a court-like mechanism to resolve...

States have a significant influence on the selection of judges to international courts. This raises the concern that judges will be biased in favor of their home states, a concern backed by some empirical research. To counter that danger, international courts usually sit in large and diverse panels. Scholars have argued that this gives judges only...

There is a consensus about the existence of an international right to vote in democratic elections. Yet states disagree about the limits of this right when it comes to the case of prisoners’ disenfranchisement. Some states allow all prisoners to vote, some disenfranchise all prisoners, and others allow only some prisoners to vote. This chapter argu...

What happens after an international court finds a state has violated international law? Many realize today that states often fail to comply with such judgments. International courts like the European Court of Human Rights (“ECHR”) have to rely on the help of Non-Governmental Organizations (“NGOs”) to shame states into compliance. In 2011, the body...

This book argues that national and international courts seek to enhance their reputations through the strategic exercise of judicial power. Courts often cannot enforce their judgments and must rely on reputational sanctions to ensure compliance. One way to do this is for courts to improve their reputation for generating compliance with their judgme...

International courts strive to enhance their legitimacy, that is, they would like the members of the international community to perceive their judgments as just, correct and unbiased even if they do not agree with their specific content. This Article argues that international courts take into account the actors they interact with, the norms they ap...

The International Criminal Court (ICC) was created by the Rome Statute to prosecute and adjudicate international crimes, such as war crimes and crimes against humanity. The ICC applies a jurisdictional rule known as the rule of complementarity. Under this rule the ICC may not prosecute crimes that are investigated or prosecuted by a state. The ICC...

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has been criticized for issuing harsher judgments against developing states than it does against the states of Western Europe. It has also been seen by some observers as issuing increasingly demanding judgments. This paper develops a theory of judicial decision-making that accounts for these trends. In orde...