Monday, June 20, 2011

Alter: The Global Spread of European Style International Courts

Karen J. Alter (Northwestern Univ. - Political Science) has posted The Global Spread of European Style International Courts (West European Politics, forthcoming). Here's the abstract:
Europe created the model of embedded international courts (IC), where domestic judges work with international judges to interpret and apply international legal rules that are also part of national legal orders. This model has now diffused around the world. This article documents the spread of European-style ICs: there are now eleven operational copies of the European Court of Justice (ECJ), three copies of the European Court of Human Rights, and a handful of additional ICs that use Europe’s embedded approach to international law. After documenting the spread of European-style ICs, the article then explains how two regions chose European style ICs, yet varied from the ECJ model.