Alter: Delegating to International Courts

Karen J. Alter (Northwestern - Political Science) has posted Delegating to International Courts: Self-Binding vs. Other-Binding Delegation (Law & Contemporary Problems, forthcoming). Here's the abstract:

Most scholars think of courts as a single category of adjudicative bodies or triadic dispute adjudication. But courts play a variety of roles in the domestic political system. Increasingly, the roles and tasks delegated to International Courts (ICs) mimic in form and content the roles and tasks delegated to courts in liberal democracies. Thus where initially ICs were created to be dispute adjudication bodies, now they are also delegated the roles of administrative review, enforcement, and even constitutional review. This paper overviews the variety of judicial roles delegated to courts, explaining how each role primarily binds other actors, binds states, or both. Analyzing twenty founding treaties for international courts, the paper shows that delegation to ICs is extensive, and growing. It highlights how delegating a role to international courts is fundamentally different than delegating the exact same task to domestic courts, assessing the implications for national sovereignty of delegating specific roles to ICs.