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Preferences and Compliance with International Law

  • Adam Chilton and Katerina Linos
Published/Copyright: August 23, 2021
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Theoretical Inquiries in Law
From the journal Theoretical Inquiries in Law Volume 22 Issue 2

Abstract

International law lacks many of the standard features of domestic law. There are few legislative or judicial bodies with exclusive authority over particular jurisdictions or subject matters, the subjects regulated by international law typically must affirmatively consent to be bound by it, and supranational authorities with the power to coerce states to comply with international obligations are rare. How can a legal system with these features generate changes in state behavior? For many theories, the ability of international law to inform and change individual preferences provides the answer. When voters care that treaty commitments be kept, or that international norms be honored, the theory goes, leaders are more likely to be able to make choices consistent with international obligations. Over the last decade, a literature has emerged testing these theories using surveys and experiments embedded in surveys. Multiple U.S. studies find that international law and international norm arguments shift public opinion in the direction of greater compliance by 4 to 20 percentage points. However, studies in foreign contexts are more mixed, with some backlash reported in countries in which international law is highly politicized. This Article describes the state of current knowledge about whether international law actually does change preferences, explains the limitations with existing research, and proposes avenues for future study.

* Adam Chilton, Professor of Law and Walter Mander Research Scholar, University of Chicago Law School (); Katerina Linos, Professor of Law and Faculty Co-Director, Miller Institute for Global Challenges and the Law, University of California, Berkeley, School of Law (). This Article was written in honor of Bob Cooter for the conference, How Law Changes What You Want: Positive and Normative Effect of Law on Values and Preferences, held on February 27-28, 2020 at the University of California, Berkeley. We are grateful for comments from conference participants, and especially from our discussant, Abhay Aneja. We thank Vanessa Rivas-Bernardy and Lauren Barden Hair for extraordinary research assistance.

Published Online: 2021-08-23
Published in Print: 2021-07-27

© 2021 by Theoretical Inquiries in Law

Articles in the same Issue

  1. Frontmatter
  2. Introduction
  3. Addictive Law
  4. Framed by the Law: Experimental Evidence for the Effects of the Salience of the Law on Preferences
  5. Moral Norms, Adaptive Preferences, and Hedonic Psychology
  6. What’s So Special About General Verdicts? Questioning the Preferred Verdict Format in American Criminal Jury Trials
  7. Preference Change and Behavioral Ethics: Can States Create Ethical People?
  8. The Data Privacy Law of Brexit: Theories of Preference Change
  9. Do Good Citizens Need Good Laws? Economics and the Expressive Function
  10. Does the Law Change Preferences?
  11. Changing People’s Preferences by the State and the Law
  12. Preferences and Compliance with International Law
  13. Anti-preferences
  14. Influencing the Preferences of Children through Legal Impacts on Parenting Style
https://doi.org/10.1515/til-2021-0023

Articles in the same Issue

  1. Frontmatter
  2. Introduction
  3. Addictive Law
  4. Framed by the Law: Experimental Evidence for the Effects of the Salience of the Law on Preferences
  5. Moral Norms, Adaptive Preferences, and Hedonic Psychology
  6. What’s So Special About General Verdicts? Questioning the Preferred Verdict Format in American Criminal Jury Trials
  7. Preference Change and Behavioral Ethics: Can States Create Ethical People?
  8. The Data Privacy Law of Brexit: Theories of Preference Change
  9. Do Good Citizens Need Good Laws? Economics and the Expressive Function
  10. Does the Law Change Preferences?
  11. Changing People’s Preferences by the State and the Law
  12. Preferences and Compliance with International Law
  13. Anti-preferences
  14. Influencing the Preferences of Children through Legal Impacts on Parenting Style
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