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The American Civil Liberties Union filed a federal lawsuit in June 2019 against the United States and the head of the U.S. Coast Guard on behalf of four Jamaican fishermen, who were forcibly removed from their fishing boat and detained for over a month at sea on four U.S. Coast Guard ships in patently inhumane conditions.

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Human Rights Court Cases | American Civil Liberties Union

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The American Civil Liberties Union filed a federal lawsuit in June 2019 against the United States and the head of the U.S. Coast Guard on behalf of four Jamaican fishermen, who were forcibly removed from their fishing boat and detained for over a month at sea on four U.S.

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Businesses activities are very important for the development of societies and individuals and for the realisation of several of their rights, including a decent work, adequate standards of living, and the right to health. However, in many parts of the world, in particular where the rule of law an

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Statement of ICC President, Judge Piotr Hofmański, for Human Rights Day

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Today, the International Criminal Court (“ICC” or “the Court”) joins the world in marking Human Rights Day. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted on this day by the United Nations in 1948, turns 75 this year. It is an important milestone in the protection of human rights worldwide. This year’s theme, “Dignity, Freedom, and Justice for All”, resonates particularly with the Court’s mandate. The ICC seeks accountability for those who have perpetrated the gravest crimes of concern to the international community: genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and the crime of aggression. Victims are at the heart of the Court’s proceedings and deserve justice. Through its work, the Court can help protect and uphold the rights of people to live in peace, equ¬¬ality and dignity. “This cause... is the cause of all humanity.” These words were spoken by former United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan, when this Court was created, when the ICC’s founding treaty, the Rome Statute, took effect. That sentiment resonates still today. In these troubled times, both the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Rome Statute are needed more than ever. The ICC will continue its work for the cause of justice with determination and resilience. For all people of the world to benefit equally from the protection of the law, I encourage all States to accede to the Rome Statute, so we can work together towards a more just world. For further information, please contact Fadi El Abdallah, Spokesperson and Head of Public Affairs Unit, International Criminal Court, by telephone at: +31 (0)70 515-9152 or +31 (0)6 46448938 or by e-mail at: fadi.el-abdallah@icc-cpi.int You can also follow the Court’s activities on X, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and Flickr

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Dec 8-9, 2022 EST (Dec 9-10, 2022 Beijing Time)

Zoom Link for registration: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZ0pfuugpzgvHNeiVNZLVY8YpvTKj3Bnm-8y
Introduction & Keynote Speech
Dec 8, 7:00-7:30 PM EST (Dec 9, 8:00-8:30 AM Beijing)

Introduction: Wei Shen (Arizona State University) and Eric Zhao (Indiana University)

Keynote Speech: Victor Nee (Cornell University) "Social Mechanisms of Institutional Resilience"

Panel 1: Stakeholder Management & Sustainability
Chair: Shipeng Yan (University of Hong Kong)

Dec 8, 7:30-8:45 PM EST (Dec 9, 8:30-9:45 AM Beijing)

Zhiyan Wu (Erasmus University): "Insuring against Activism Risk: Anti-SLAPP Laws and Precautionary Corporate Social Responsibility"

Yejee Lee (Indiana University): "Smart Disclosure: An Enabler for Multinationals to Reduce Human Rights Violations in Global Suppliers"

Li Tong (Peking University): "The Burden of Being Distinct: Uniqueness in CSR Strategy and the Effectiveness of CSR as an Insurance Mechanism"

Panel Discussant: Cuili Qian (University of Texas, Dallas)

Panel 2: Activism, Politics, and Innovation
Chair: Lori Yue (Columbia Business School)

Dec 8, 9:00-10:15 PM EST (Dec 9, 10:00-11:15 AM Beijing)

Tony He (Rutgers Business School): "Business and Peace: The Impact of Firm-Stakeholder Relational Strategies on Conflict Risk"

Jing Li (Simon Fraser University): "Techno-Nationalism and International Acquisition of Firms: Evidence from Made in China 2025"

Yuan Shi (Cornell University): "The Changing Nature of Firm R&D: Short-termism and Technological Influence of US Firms"

Panel Discussant: Nan Jia (University of Southern California)

Panel 3: Entrepreneurship
Chair: Jue Wang (Pennsylvania State University)

Dec 9, 7:00-8:15 PM EST (Dec 10, 8:00-9:15 AM Beijing)

Jiayi Bao (University of North Carolina): "Do Makerspaces Affect Entrepreneurship? Evidence on Entry, Experimentation, and Commercialization"

Andy Wu (Harvard University): "Value and Complexity in New Ventures"

Wei Yang (CEIBS): "The External Implications of Organizational Design: How Formalization and Decentralization Affect External Equity Investment in New Ventures"

Panel Discussant: Subrina Shen (University of Texas, Austin)

Panel 4: Technology and Innovation
Chair: Han Jiang (Tulane University)

Dec 9, 8:30-9:45 PM EST (Dec 10, 9:30-10:45 AM Beijing)

Mingtao Xu (Tsinghua University): "Trolling for Dollars: A Theory of Patent Monetization, Competing Business Models, and Patent Assertion Entities"

Nianchen Han (Nanyang Technological University): "Appropriability Risk and Knowledge Search: Evidence from App Developers in the Digital Economy"

Mo Chen (NYU Shanghai): "The microfoundations of Innovation in Complex Ecosystems: Evidence from Linux Kernel"

Panel Discussant: Maggie Zhou (University of Michigan)

Social Hour (Organizers: Han Jiang, Cuili Qian, Shipeng Yan, Lori Yue, Eric Zhao)
Dec 9, 9:45-10:15 PM EST (Dec 10, 10:45-11:15 AM Beijing)

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The Second IACMR Macro Research Frontier Conference

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Dec 8-9, 2022 EST (Dec 9-10, 2022 Beijing Time) Zoom Link for registration: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZ0pfuugpzgvHNeiVNZLVY8YpvTKj3Bnm-8y Introduction & Keynote Speech Dec 8, 7:00-7:30 PM EST (Dec 9, 8:00-8:30 AM Beijing) Introduction: Wei Shen (Arizona State University) and Eric Zhao (Indiana University) Keynote Speech: Victor Nee (Cornell University) "Social Mechanisms of Institutional Resilience"

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Abstract

Many norms develop in the absence of clear templates for how to implement them. I argue that, even under these conditions, individuals and organizations can still successfully push for new norms, along with attendant changes in state practices. They do so through a mode of action that I term communicative entrepreneurship. Unlike norm entrepreneurs, communicative entrepreneurs do not project normative or technocratic certainty. They use nudges and networking strategies to trigger debates that define the contours of emerging normative scripts. I illustrate this dynamic with the case of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, which became interested in regulating the use of its jurisprudence by local judges. Lacking a script amenable for diffusion, it triggered a dialogue with national courts to jointly regulate citation practices, and more generally, judges' obligations with respect to international human rights jurisprudence. Using original interviews and other sources, I trace the impact of communicative entrepreneurship on the behavior of Mexican and Colombian high courts. I show that it led to the development of new judicial decision-making standards in two very different contexts and therefore bolstered the authority of the Inter-American Court.

Introduction

Scholars often rely on models of norm entrepreneurship to explain how weak international actors promote new standards of appropriate behavior that, in turn, transform state practices and identities (Finnemore and Sikkink 1998; for example, Keck and Sikkink 1998; Alford 2008; Deitelhoff 2009). In these accounts, nonstate actors, such as nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) or intergovernmental organizations (IGOs), spread highly specific recipes of behavior. These transnational activist networks, when successful, trigger "norm cascades" that fundamentally change ideas about right and wrong and, with them, state practices (Sikkink 2011, chapter 1). Competitive or identity-based emulation processes (Simmons and Elkins 2004, 172-176; Cao 2010, 826-829), and the creation of institutions relying on carrots and sticks to deepen socialization (Greenhill 2010, 131-133), reinforce these cascades.

But how do norms take hold when the actors who promote them lack templates regarding the behavioral, technocratic, or moral standards they would like states to adopt? In this article, I develop an account of one possible process, which I term communicative entrepreneurship. Communicative entrepreneurs begin by identifying social domains in which they would like to see greater agreement concerning standards of appropriate behavior. Unlike norm entrepreneurs, however, they do not start with a clear normative script that they can advocate. Thus, communicative entrepreneurs cannot engage in the standard tactics available to norm entrepreneurs, such as shaming, pedagogy, or persuasion (Finnemore 1993; Risse-Kappen, Ropp, and Sikkink 1999; Johnston 2001; Payne 2001; Goodman and Jinks 2013). Instead, they aim to draw relevant interlocutors into a conversation about how to actualize a set of values.

Communicative entrepreneurs promote exchanges during which their targets are invited to supply ideas and jointly craft new behavioral standards. They present, and conceive of, their project of norm development as an open-ended dialogue. Communicative entrepreneurs create special venues that provide a playing field conducive to genuine discussion. Norm development thus becomes a multidirectional, consensual, and participatory process-one that acquires a fundamentally horizontal character. While they want to "build community" and promote convergence in behavioral patterns, communicative entrepreneurs lack normative or technocratic certainty. They do not put forward, let alone harbor, precisely defined ideas about how to operationalize new standards. Under such conditions of uncertainty, communicative entrepreneurship plays a key role in bringing people together to define the contours of emerging normative scripts. In doing so, it creates a broader community of stakeholders with an interest in defining and implementing a new norm.

In the next section, I provide a more detailed discussion of communicative entrepreneurship. I show how actors use nudging and networking strategies to promote dialogue and thus thicken the normative fabric of international society in otherwise poorly scripted domains. I then use the case of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR) to illustrate this alternative type of agency in norm cycles. Like other international courts, the IACtHR became interested in regulating the use of its jurisprudence as a source of law. Lacking a clear script ready for propagation, however, it triggered a dialogue of equals with national judges in order to jointly develop norms of transjudicial communication. Communicative entrepreneurship led to the operationalization of new judicial decision-making standards that increased the IACtHR's influence in the region and helped put an end to a long history of resistance to international law among high courts. While the literature on the causes of the increasing relevance of international law among domestic courts tends to focus on domestic factors, including the constitutionalization of human rights treaties (Huneeus 2016, 180), the creation of constitutional courts and the inflow of new judicial personnel (Landau 2005, 710-711; Nunes 2010, 83-86), intercourt power jockeying (Alter 2001), or strategic litigation (Gonzalez-Ocantos 2016, chapter 2), my focus on an international factor shows that these are only partial accounts. Specifically, I trace how communicative entrepreneurship interacts with local circumstances to condition the pace and shape of normative change.

To trace the motivations, modus operandi, and effectiveness of the IACtHR as a communicative entrepreneur, I rely on an original citation database covering the jurisprudence of thirteen national courts, interviews with key players in the Inter-American System, and official documents. Furthermore, I leverage temporal variation in the jurisprudence of two national courts, the Supreme Court of Mexico and the Constitutional Court of Colombia, to unpack the mechanisms through which communicative entrepreneurship jump-started a productive conversation. These cases present contrasting levels of prior openness to international law: Mexico's high court has been historically wary of external legal influences, whereas Colombia's has always been open to foreign sources of law. The comparison therefore reveals communicative entrepreneurship as the catalyst of a collective scripting exercise despite different initial predispositions to address the issue and highlights the contributions of local judges to norm development.

Communicative Entrepreneurship

In 1929, democratic theorist Alexander Lindsay noted that through deliberation "something emerges [that] each can recognize as embodying the truth of what he stood for and yet (or rather therefore) is seen to serve the purpose . . . better than what any one conceived for himself" (quoted in Milewicz and Goodin 2016). Habermas went a step further, associating the legitimacy of rules with inclusive deliberation: "[o]nly those laws count as legitimate to which all members of the legal community can assent in a discursive process of legislation" (Habermas 1996, 110). Similarly, Brunee and Toope's interactional theory of law ( 2010, 24-25) suggests that law becomes authoritative "only when it is mutually constructed." These deliberative understandings of legitimacy help conceptualize pathways to international norm construction that are more consensual and participatory than those depicted in models of norm entrepreneurship and that do not view the projection of moral or epistemic certainty as a necessary trigger of widespread transformations in states' practices and identities. I refer to international actors that adopt a deliberative approach to norm development as communicative entrepreneurs.

Entrepreneurs promote ideas, activities, and business ventures; communicative entrepreneurs promote discussions. To do so, communicative entrepreneurs create venues for open debate and want others to perceive such venues as highly inclusive, horizontal, and participatory. They thus seek to reach common ground to establish behavioral standards for poorly regulated social interactions. The logic of action that drives communicative entrepreneurship is akin to Risse's ( 2000) "logic of arguing." This is a noninstrumental form of rationality that commits actors to deploying good, universalizable reasons to defend opinions in front of others. Crucially, as in Habermas's social theory, communicative entrepreneurs are fully prepared when instigating debates to submit their views to the force of the better argument (Habermas 1984). They are not motivated by the "logic of consequences" because they do not seek to manipulate discourse in order to impose a predetermined script. Neither are their actions guided by the "logic of appropriateness," for at this stage, norms are still blurry, contested, or simply nonexistent and will be the product of the conversation.

The contrast with norm entrepreneurs, who feature prominently in agency-based models of norm development, is instructive. First, norm entrepreneurs harbor clear behavioral standards that they seek to propagate. They have " strong notions about appropriate or desirable behavior" (Finnemore and Sikkink 1998, 896). Consequently, their campaigns develop and promote clear operationalization strategies. For example, scholars have documented how NGOs craft highly detailed legal arguments to facilitate human rights prosecutions and thus propagate anti-impunity norms (Gonzalez-Ocantos 2016, 43-49). And those who study NGOs committed to advancing political equality norms show how activists promote the adoption of legislative gender quotas with specific design characteristics (Towns 2010, chapter 7).

Communicative entrepreneurs, by contrast, lack this conceptual and operational clarity. They seek neither to convince their interlocutors of a deeply held belief, nor to offer a highly scripted alternative course of action. Instead, communicative entrepreneurs aspire to a greater understanding of, and ease with, evolving normative prescriptions. It's not that communicative entrepreneurs lack an agenda; after all, "communicative action serves to coordinate the action of people in order to achieve certain objectives" (Müller 2004, 405). But communicative entrepreneurs are usually at a loss regarding how best to accomplish these objectives, and do not always know how to define workable parameters of behavior. Consequently, they reach out to relevant stakeholders to instigate talks, share insights, and figure this out.

Second, the central tool of norm entrepreneurs is socialization. Socialization involves drawing others into an existing community bound by specific norms and values (Johnston 2001, 494-496; Checkel 2005, 804). Although they sometimes use coercive strategies such as shaming, norm entrepreneurs seek principally to persuade states (Payne 2001). This involves creating discursive frames that link their ideas to those principles that enjoy widespread legitimacy and resonate with audiences, including universal values like equality or dignity (Keck and Sikkink 1998, 27; Sandholtz and Stiles 2009, 15-18). Persuasion is therefore a unidirectional process that transforms the values, priorities, and causal beliefs of targets in line with predefined standards (Checkel 2001, 562; Johnston 2001, 496-499). Norm entrepreneurs are not willing to submit their views to the force of the better argument; they are convinced theirs is the better argument.

Communicative entrepreneurs operate differently. When communicative rationality, as opposed to persuasion, characterizes a social interaction, actors aim jointly to fill in the blanks of otherwise vague behavioral standards and thus replenish the reservoir of common understandings that facilitate interaction and social integration (Habermas 1984). Communicative entrepreneurs may of course fail to reach a consensus, but they strive to have an open debate that helps define what ought to be done, providing an actionable template acceptable to all. Instead of deploying frames, communicative entrepreneurs therefore instigate debates provoking responses from their desired interlocutors and creating suitable venues for such exchanges to unfold. These efforts raise problem salience and emphasize the need to find solutions. Discursive strategies focus on conveying openness to having discussions in which nobody projects normative certainty and different views are given equal consideration.

The concept of communicative entrepreneurship points to the dialogic dimension of norm cycles. In doing so, it stands together with a number of other scholarly contributions. For example, Sandholtz ( 2008) shows that the application of general principles to concrete situations triggers public arguments that lead to cycles of norm change. Similarly, Risse ( 2000, 33) suggests that dialogue is a prominent feature of norm cycles because the "public spheres enabling challenges and counterchallenges to validity claims" are present "in many issue-areas and regions of the world." What's more: dialogue often transforms how states perceive their interests and identities in unexpected ways through processes such as "argumentative self-entrapment" (Risse 2000, 22-23). Others too contend that, when dialogue is present, it increases the susceptibility of states to the influence of weaker nonstate actors. As Deitelhoff ( 2009, 44) notes, moving away from bargaining, and closer to a conversation, "changes the underlying power structure of negotiations." Finally, for some scholars the availability of spaces for inclusive dialogue and active norm contestation by relevant stakeholders is a precondition for norm legitimacy (Wiener 2017). These arguments tend to focus on the structural conditions that facilitate dialogue or communicative action and trace the consequences of dialogue or its absence. Attention to communicative entrepreneurship, by contrast, reveals how actors themselves can purposely create those conditions.

An Application to International Courts

Communicative entrepreneurship, as a model of norm development, is useful for thinking about how international courts boost use of their jurisprudence by domestic judiciaries, thereby scripting and routinizing the influence of international law.

Yet, we cannot take for granted judges' awareness of international law and jurisprudence and the obligations these impose on them. For example, throughout the twentieth century, members of the legal field in Latin America perceived citations of sources of law other than domestic statutes as utterly inappropriate due to the hegemony of legal positivism (Lopez-Medina 2004, chapter 1; Couso 2010). Until recently, Mexico's Supreme Court even explicitly banned the use foreign precedents (Cortez 2017, 19). Likewise, a survey conducted in Colombia in 1989 showed that only 10 percent of judges knew of at least one human rights treaty (Valencia 1990). Judges interviewed by Gonzalez-Ocantos ( 2016) in five countries also admitted profound ignorance of international human rights law, even after key treaties were granted constitutional status. Scholars also document a similar resistance in post-1945 Western Europe and Eastern Europe prior to EU-accession (Alter 2001, chapters 3-4; Skomerska-Muchowska 2017).

In the absence of clear rules that operationalize the effects of international jurisprudence in domestic law, the robustness of transjudicial communication is likely to suffer because local courts will either ignore precedents or use them in inconsistent ways. By contrast, a successful scripting exercise is bound to systematize the influence of international courts. But how do new norms of transjudicial communication develop, in turn transforming decision-making routines? Communicative entrepreneurship provides useful tools for understanding how international courts might expand judges' tool sets and promote the habit to consider international jurisprudence.

First, the aforementioned uncertainty surrounding the legal status of international jurisprudence also affects international courts. As a result, an inclusive conversation can aid in the development of the necessary standards. For one, international courts cannot simply dictate operational rules applicable to all courts under their jurisdiction, for domestic judges work in heterogeneous institutional environments. General solutions based on a formalistic understanding of the relationship as strictly hierarchical are hence unlikely to work across countries (Shany 2007, 7). Moreover, national judges may rebel against this imposition, or decide to delegate harmonization to international courts, in both cases continuing to rule as they see fit. To further complicate matters, international courts, especially human rights courts, often rule on exceptional cases. The relevance of this jurisprudence for the daily work of domestic courts is far from clear, and it is difficult to extract general decision rules from it.

Due to the uncertainty surrounding this issue domain, international courts cannot behave as "teachers of norms" (Finnemore 1993). After all, teaching presupposes clarity about the principles one intends to disseminate. International courts must therefore rely instead on alternative mechanisms to increase their influence over judicial practices. Specifically, a dialogic approach to legal construction is bound to be productive, because taking into account the insights of domestic courts enables international courts to proffer solutions to the problem of the status of international jurisprudence bound to work best in contexts with varying political and constitutional constraints. A two-way flow of information and ideas increases the likelihood that informative, viable, and acceptable operational standards emerge. This flow can also disrupt local jurisprudential inertia and ultimately plug the normative gap.

Second, regardless of the availability of ready-made operational rules, international courts have a limited capacity to force states to take them seriously. A robust transjudicial communication is unlikely to emerge from a top-down process through which international courts compel domestic judges to systematically use their jurisprudence via sanctions. An international human rights court can, for example, shame a state into implementing a specific decision, but it can hardly force a supreme court to accept its pronouncements as routine compulsory reference points. Indeed, the politics of regulating the authority of international precedents are bound to be more complex than, say, the politics behind the development of standards regulating treaty citations, simply because international jurisprudence is more threatening for local judges. By applying treaties to concrete cases, international court rulings inevitably reduce the degrees of freedom for treaty interpretation available to local courts. These degrees of freedom are otherwise quite generous (Sandholtz 2015, 608-615). Furthermore, acknowledging the authority of international jurisprudence risks upsetting the hierarchy of the domestic legal order. Among other things, it gives lower courts a platform from which to justify deviations from high courts' criteria (Alter 2001, 48-49).

In light of these tensions, it is not surprising that local courts often prefer a loosely regulated relationship with international jurisprudence, as this affords them greater latitude to invoke precedents opportunistically. If international courts are to avoid negative reactions and promote tighter behavioral scripts that lead to a consistent engagement with their jurisprudence, they must temper this resistance. To do so, they can proceed in ways that nurture self-policing impulses among national courts. Communicative entrepreneurship helps achieve this. When behaving as communicative entrepreneurs, international courts recognize the input of local judicial actors in the process of establishing norms about whether, and under what conditions, international jurisprudence can/must be invoked as a valid source of law.

Mechanisms of Influence

How do communicative entrepreneurs instigate norm development? First, communicative entrepreneurs deploy nudges. Nudges are not "mandates" or explicit behavioral scripts that prescribe alternative courses of action (Thaler and Sunstein 2008, 6). By contrast, nudges are subtle interventions that entice others to think differently about the choices at hand, interrupt routine decision-making patterns, and problematize taken-for-granted habits. The disruptive and nonprescriptive properties of nudges enable communicative entrepreneurs to call attention to poorly normed social interactions and lure reticent, uninterested, or reluctant stakeholders into discussions about the creation of new behavioral scripts.

The content of nudges varies across political/social domains. In the case of international courts that seek to trigger discussions about the legal status of their jurisprudence, nudges are usually embedded in ruling and include messages targeted directly at national judiciaries. To call the attention of these stakeholders, international courts avoid the usual practice of addressing the "state" as a unitary actor and write rulings that send signals to local courts, treating them as distinct entities. The goal is to open a formal channel of communication that transforms the choice architecture of local judges and interrupts business as usual.

For example, some nudges try to showcase intercourt citations as a viable opinion-writing tool for local judges. In this sense, one option available to international courts is to use national jurisprudence as a source law. This argumentative technique signals the presence of shared concerns/values, shows consideration for local ideas, and indicates that transjudicial communication is not a hierarchical phenomenon but a tool for the collective construction of legal standards. For national courts, these references are a source of pride. While citations may soften resistances to start a dialogue, other nudges offer more direct means to jump-start a conversation. For instance, international courts can explicitly to mention in their decisions that international jurisprudence creates responsibilities for national judiciaries, thus compelling local judges to respond in order to define what those responsibilities are. When acting as communicative entrepreneurs, international courts do not provide a clear operationalization of the responsibilities invoked in the nudge; they simply argue that those responsibilities exist and thus provoke a discussion. At a very practical level, this ensures that national judges are formally notified of international rulings. More importantly, mentioning judges as subjects of international legal obligations increases the likelihood that local courts will not see international court rulings as a foreign policy issue to be dealt with exclusively by the executive, as it has traditionally been the case (Benvenisti 1993), and feel the urge to respond.

In the next sections, I show that the IACtHR deployed communicative entrepreneurship to great effect, using nudging and networking to offer local courts a level playing during the process of creating norms of transjudicial communication.

Launching an Inter-American Conversation

The IACtHR's limited influence over the behavior of national courts is a particularly pressing challenge for the development of coherent human rights protection standards across the region. The court lacks treaty-based channels such as Article 177 of the Treaty of Rome, which played a key role in establishing the authority of the European Court of Justice among local judges (Burley and Mattli 1993, 58). True, the IACtHR advanced a robust set of standards on access to justice, thus cementing its reputation as a bulwark against impunity from early on. It also consolidated clusters of rulings on topics such as indigenous rights, reproductive rights, and freedom of speech. Until the 2000s, however, national courts rarely used this jurisprudence in their day-to-day activities, undermining the reach of the IACtHR's progressive standards (Figure 1).

Around the turn of the century, the IACtHR became aware of this impact deficit and reached the conclusion that its jurisprudence would not automatically translate into greater influence over domestic courts. It therefore began to consider the need to spark a transjudicial dialogue about the international legal obligations of national judges. But in light of the historic resistance to international law among Latin American judiciaries, the IACtHR had to approach the issue with great care so as to generate goodwill prior to beginning discussions about developing norms of transjudicial communication. According to a former clerk,

The IACtHR, though, lacked a clear vision about how to regulate the use of its jurisprudence by local courts. Top-down diffusion of ready-made behavioral scripts, following a norm entrepreneurial model, was thus a nonstarter. The court began to behave as a communicative entrepreneur, using its rulings to nudge domestic judges in ways that put on the table previously ignored questions about the authority of international jurisprudence. While the IACtHR had argued before that state practices contrary to the Convention were invalid, prior to the mid-2000s it had never referred to the role of judges in policing incompatibility. Its rulings had instead addressed the state as a unitary actor, failing to build specific bridges with judicial constituencies to clarify their duties. This changed when the court introduced the idea of the "conventionality review," first in Judge García-Ramírez's vote in Myrna Mack v. Guatemala (2003) and later in the majority's decision in Almonacid v. Chile (2006). Consistent with the use of nudging by communicative entrepreneurs, the IACtHR coined a term that made the issue an unavoidable topic of conversation and quickly became the focal point of debates about how national courts ought to deal with Inter-American jurisprudence:

[J]udges, as part of the state apparatus, are also subject to [the American Convention] . . . The judiciary must exercise a type of "conventionality review" [of] internal juridical norms . . . In doing so, the judiciary must not only take into account the treaty, but also interpretations rendered by the Inter-American Court.

Inter-American judges were unable to provide a more specific formula to operationalize the "conventionality review." The vague enunciation of what the court hoped would become a new behavioral standard reflects this uncertainty. In fact, the IACtHR saw these rulings as the beginning, not the end, of a conversation. Some observers, however, misunderstood its intentions, characterizing the proposal as a move to impose the supremacy of Inter-American law and not as an invitation to talk (Dulitzky 2015). In a region only starting to get used to the review of constitutionality, the idea that judges ought to also check the "conventionality" of laws sounded, understandably, quite radical. The IACtHR was aware that being perceived as a top-down entrepreneur of strict standards of behavior could hamper the development of a productive relationship with domestic courts, so the judges quickly clarified their "communicative" intentions. The message therefore became one where national courts should only exercise the conventionality review within the boundaries for their own prerogatives (see Ferrer-MacGregor 2015). Judge García-Ramírez was particularly keen to highlight the importance of rejecting rigid interpretations and accommodate differences in national constitutions and judicial structures. The court made it clear that the doctrine was not a ready-made template for action, but an opportunity to discuss how to apply Inter-American jurisprudence in diverse contexts.

During interviews, judges spoke as communicative entrepreneurs. They doubtless understood the perils of overreach and, crucially, lacked a clear vision of how to operationalize the conventionality review. According to one judge,

Our message to local courts was that they ought to take the jurisprudence of the IACtHR into account, but always decide using the instruments that provide the best possible protections for the rights in question. These may or may not be found in international law . . . The development of the doctrine was an effort to get judges to pay attention to the Convention . . . But the goal was not a pedagogical one. When we began to experience jurisdictional conflicts between supreme courts and the IACtHR, we thought this doctrine would allow us to find a solution.

Two other judges also emphasized the importance of projecting uncertainty:

Networking efforts during the 2000s provide further evidence of the IACtHR's normative uncertainty and its willingness to jump-start a dialogue. The record indicates that, between 1980 and 2014, the court organized 449 outreach activities. These included the following: interactions with local judges during seminars, official visits, and the signature of inter-institutional accords; academic events to discuss Inter-American jurisprudence; and official visits by heads of state and representatives of international organizations. As shown in Figure 2, academic events and meetings with judges were nonexistent during the first fifteen years of the series. By 2014, however, they had grown to become as, if not more, common than political contacts. The development of the conventionality review, which is contemporaneous with this trend, created a fertile discursive focal point for face-to-face interactions.

The IACtHR had great interest in talking to supreme and constitutional courts because it realized that its legitimacy depended on the goodwill it could generate among local judges . . . [The] summits offered the perfect environment to start this dialogue . . . because these are closed seminars . . . As a result judges could openly exchange points of view.

The IACtHR thrived in this context, approaching local judges in nonthreatening ways and collecting valuable information:

It was absolutely essential that the judges got to know each other personally . . . Both had to realize they were dealing with reasonable people, capable of putting together cogent arguments. [For the IACtHR] it was crucial to generate the impression that the conventionality review was not part of a power play and that any controversy surrounding it was simply a matter of different opinions . . . The network allowed the court to take the pulse of national judiciaries . . . It's important that an international court knows how to measure its strength and legitimacy and to know when it can push for certain processes and when to act prudently.

Other testimonies reinforce the point that networking allowed the IACtHR to present itself as a nonthreatening actor willing to promote the participation of local courts in horizontal discussions. According to a former clerk, "for some Inter-American judges it was very important to start a personal dialogue with local courts to explain their goals and intentions and expose themselves to criticisms." Judges exploited this intimacy to project openness to ideas that could help them clarify the contours of the conventionality review: "face-to-face our judges are better able to put forward a moderate vision of the conventionality review, one that generates fewer frictions."

It is of course difficult to reconstruct precisely what happened during these informal exchanges or whether ideas indeed flowed. But the testimonies of some participants do hint at how horizontality played out:

I met in private with high court judges. One of them told us that she was happy to abide by the Convention, but not by the court's jurisprudence. So we argued. When we talked about the conventionality review I told them that it didn't mean that they had to directly apply all rulings. I clarified that they had to analyze each precedent to see if they could be useful to solve specific cases . . . [In another country] we also met in private with some judges and gave them ideas on how to [comply with our jurisprudence]. But we also asked them for ideas on how to approach a judgment we were drafting at the time. This kind of deference is crucial.

Another judge also characterized these meetings as a two-way street that helped shape of the conventionality review doctrine:

We wanted to trigger an exchange. An exchange means that ideas should circulate both ways . . . To the extent that national high courts were producing important innovations, we wanted to be able to learn about those rulings . . . These meetings also produce interpersonal exchanges that thaw relationships with reticent courts, allowing us not to persuade, but to explain our motives. This is what happened with the Uruguayan court after the 2011 Gelman decision.

To illustrate how this happened, and show that greater attention to Inter-American rulings had substantive consequences for the development of rights protections, I trace the impact of nudging and networking in countries belonging to both groups. First, I look at how the IACtHR disrupted longstanding decision-making patterns in Mexico, luring reticent and ignorant judges into a productive discussion about the status of international jurisprudence. Second, I turn to Colombia, where, despite greater openness to international law, communicative entrepreneurship also played a role in regulating the influence of international jurisprudence. The IACtHR triggered an intense discussion that led to the development of more detailed behavioral scripts than those the Constitutional Court had been willing to produce on its own. Throughout the narrative I show the insufficiency of domestic factors highlighted by scholars interested in explaining the rising impact of international law, such as the constitutionalization of treaties (Huneeus 2016), the creation of constitutional courts and the inflow of new judicial personnel (Landau 2005; Nunes 2010), or intercourt power jockeying (Alter 2001). Furthermore, I explore how communicative entrepreneurship interacts with these factors, pushing norm development forward.

Mexico

Prior to 2006, the Mexican Supreme Court had never cited Inter-American jurisprudence. In the following six years, however, the citation count rose to 325, putting Mexico in fourth place in the overall ranking of Latin American courts. This temporal change in judicial habits is puzzling because Mexico's Supreme Court is famous for its history of resistance to foreign sources of law. The change in trajectory can be explained in part by the communicative entrepreneurship of the IACtHR, which thus influenced a "least-likely" case.

During the Partido Revolucionario Institucional's regime, the Mexican judiciary was an appendix of the presidency. This began to change in the 1990s when the ruling party strengthened the autonomy of the supreme court by giving it original jurisdiction in matters raised by legislatures, parties, and governors. The court thus became a referee in disputes between the branches of the federal government and between levels of the federation (Magaloni 2003). Despite these changes, the supreme court still lagged behind the regional trend toward more robust rights-protecting jurisprudence (Ansolabehere 2010), a phenomenon that is often attributed to a rigid view of the constitution: judges still favored plain-meaning interpretation and did not see it as their duty to expand the content of rights by interpreting the constitution creatively, in light of, for example, international human rights law. According to this rigid version of formalism, the law involves a set of unequivocal, noncomplementary written rules, leaving little room for judicial interpretation. For example, Article 133 of the constitution incorporates international law into the legal system, but supreme court precedents historically downgraded its status.

The testimony of a former supreme court judge crystallizes a legal philosophy that fails to encourage judges to think about the compatibility of laws with fundamental rights and leads them to apply constitutionality tests in purely procedural terms:

The pervasiveness of formalism was partly a legacy of authoritarian rule. During the era of one-party rule, supreme court jurisprudence was meant to strictly regulate legal interpretation, discipline lower courts, minimize their ability to discretionally interpret the law, and make them perfect agents of the regime. The system thus promoted an extreme version of formalism, engrained rigid interpretative routines, and stifled judicial power (Magaloni 2007). The judiciary also failed to reward innovative behavior. A supreme court judge reflects on how difficult it is to disrupt the reproduction of these problem-solving templates: "There is an institutional inertia that determines attitudes and ways of reading the constitution and our main laws. It is hard to overcome this longstanding way of understanding the role of the judiciary." Formalistic routines also limited judges' knowledge of alternative sources of law. For example, when asked why in famous forced disappearance cases the supreme court virtually ignored seminal Inter-American jurisprudence, another justice explained,

What accounts for the change in citation practices? New personnel doubtless played a role. Justice Cossío, who arrived in 2003, broke with the tradition of promoting existing judges to the supreme court and facilitated the influx of fresh legal ideas compatible with a dialogue with Inter-American judges. Before joining the court, Cossío was a law professor at a private university that promotes a more modern approach to law than the Autonomous National University of Mexico, the traditional incubator of judges in the country. In addition, Cossío completed a doctorate in Spain under the supervision of influential neoconstitutionalist jurists, who left a strong imprint on his legal preferences. In time, Cossío became aware of the importance of resocializing judges in this alternative tradition to deinstitutionalize certain decision-making routines and, thus, to open the judiciary to international law:

To help implement this modern vision of constitutionalism, he recruited clerks educated abroad who were also judicial outsiders. Their mission was to disrupt the formalistic instincts typical of supreme court jurisprudence. As one explained,

Resistance to modify longstanding routines, however, remained strong, with there being various internal barriers to change. As a condition to join Cossío's opinions "other judges usually told us to remove some or most of the citations." Another clerk similarly admitted that, for many of her colleagues, trudging the jurisprudence of the IACtHR was like "going to Mars." Little wonder, then, that by 2010 just thirty-eight of the 159 references to Inter-American jurisprudence found in supreme court rulings belonged to decisions drafted by judges other than Cossío.

While Cossío's changes did begin to expose the court to international standards, they were alone insufficient to guarantee a robust transjudicial dialogue. The communicative entrepreneurship of the IACtHR added crucial momentum to the process. First, the IACtHR deployed networking strategies. For example, the staff of the Mexican branch of the KAF was responsible for spearheading the regional network described in the previous section, so the IACtHR took advantage of these connections. As organizers of the "Working Group on Constitutional Justice," which included Inter-American judges and academics with strong links to the Mexican judicial establishment, KAF officers were uniquely positioned to connect both courts. In addition, one of the members of the group had clerked in the supreme court and was now affiliated to the Instituto de Investigaciones Jurídicas, an institution that played a crucial role in the development of the conventionality review doctrine. These ties, and the geographical proximity of the actors, allowed the IACtHR to cultivate strong bonds with the supreme court and introduce new ideas about transjudicial communication. An important institutional outcome of these contacts was the creation of an internship program that allowed Mexican clerks to spend time in Costa Rica. Between 2005 and 2012 at least nine clerks made use of the scheme (Cortez 2017, 125-128).

Second, the IACtHR made use of jurisprudential nudges. Indeed, Mexico's Supreme Court did not seriously debate the status of Inter-American jurisprudence until the IACtHR put the issue on the table in Radilla v. Mexico (2009). Nudging lured Mexican judges into thinking systematically about how to define the parameters of use of international case law, thus triggering a conscious effort to operationalize a radical change in the court's interpretive routines. This in turn catalyzed a rise in citations.

In Radilla the IACtHR ordered Mexico to investigate a forced disappearance that took place in 1974. Crucially, the ruling invoked the conventionality review to remind Mexican judges of their responsibilities under international law and invited them to adopt more demanding standards when addressing rights violations. Importantly, unlike previous decisions against Mexico, this one unequivocally mentioned the judiciary as one of its intended interlocutors. When comparing the reaction of the supreme court to this and previous IACtHR rulings, it is clear that the nudging employed in Radilla played a role in jump-starting a conversation. As a clerk privy to the internal debate explained, " Campo Algodonero v. Mexico [n.b. an earlier ruling] didn't make much noise inside the court. It never mentions the federal judicial branch . . . Radilla is different: it called the attention of the court. "

The Supreme Court began to discuss Radilla in 2010. Initially, the judges had a protracted debate about whether they should hear the case at all. The tone of the debate showed how disconcerting it was to discuss the possibility of transforming interpretive routines. According to a clerk with access to these deliberations, "the idea that they had to discuss the implications of an international ruling against Mexico, and comply with it, were not things that fell within their legal horizons." A majority eventually agreed to address the issue and in July 2011 handed down a landmark ruling stating that judges must exercise the conventionality review. The change was so radical that Radilla officially inaugurated a new "jurisprudential era" in the history of the court.

Interview data suggests that the interaction between communicative entrepreneurship and local factors explains this dramatic jurisprudential shift. For example, a clerk mentioned intercourt power jockeying as one of the factors that explain why the supreme court responded to the nudge the way it did:

They were able to moderate the impact of the IACtHR and explain the way in which Mexican judges should apply a part of the legal order over which supreme court judges have no control. It was a way of internalizing the external juridical problem.

Another factor mentioned in the interviews was timing: while the supreme court debated Radilla, Congress amended the constitution to elevate the status of human rights law. This too demanded a response, especially in light of the new Inter-American precedent:

Put another way, because of the possibility of lower courts clinging to Inter-American rulings to develop independent jurisprudence and the novelty implied by constitutionalization of human rights treaties, the supreme court found it in its institutional interest to acknowledge the IACtHR as a valid interlocutor. It felt strongly compelled to participate in a transnational dialogue to regulate how the Mexican judiciary would respond to the new paradigm of judicial reasoning implied in the conventionality review doctrine. This would avoid a breakdown in the judicial chain of command and secure the supreme court's position.

Communicative entrepreneurship catalyzed the transjudicial dialogue by intensifying debates inside the court regarding the status of international law. At the same time, however, the vagueness of the conventionality review doctrine left enough space for the supreme court to micromanage the influence of international jurisprudence, in line with its domestic predicaments. Indeed, far from being passive listeners, Mexican judges used this and other rulings to operationalize the doctrine in ways that reduced the threat of international law and appeased internal divisions.

With the intention of ameliorating those tensions Radilla brought to the surface, judges in the majority used another case to concede that IACtHR decisions do not trump the constitution. In so doing they preserved parts of the old hierarchy. The IACtHR did not protest this move to establish narrower boundaries for the obligations arising as a result of the conventionality review doctrine. This attitude is consistent with the ethos of communicative entrepreneurship.

Radilla led to a clearer operationalization of judges' international obligations and catalyzed a change in interpretive habits via a rise in citations of IACtHR jurisprudence. In fact, more than 50 percent of citations of Inter-American jurisprudence between 1994 and 2012 appear during the three-year period following the nudge (2010-2012). The change also affected lower courts. In a survey of 141 federal judges conducted in 2015, 70 percent reported upholding a variety of fundamental rights since 2010 and using the conventionality review (Ansolabehere, Botero, and Gonzalez-Ocantos 2015). For example, a handful of judges began to rely on IACtHR jurisprudence to limit the jurisdiction of military courts, with important implications for cases of human rights violations. Indeed, this is why some crimes perpetrated by the army during the "war on drugs," such as the 2014 Tlatlaya massacre that ended with the brutal execution of twenty-two people, are being tried in civilian courts. This new criteria increases the chances of favorable outcomes for the victims of state violence, something unimaginable just a few years ago.

To summarize, the IACtHR summoned Mexican judges to a conversation many of them originally refused to have. Without communicative efforts it certainly would have taken longer for Mexican judges to begin to regulate the status of international jurisprudence and apply it more frequently. For example, the arrival of ambitious new judges with fresh ideas about the nature of constitutionalism was insufficient to manufacture a radical shift in jurisprudence. By contrast, the clarion call coming from Costa Rica was hard to ignore, even for the old guard. But communicative entrepreneurship did benefit from other local developments, such as changes in the formal constitutional status of human rights treaties. Importantly, communicative entrepreneurship gave Mexican judges room to contribute to the development of new standards, thus allowing them to craft norms of transjudicial communication with an eye on their own needs and priorities.

Colombia

The communicative entrepreneurship of the IACtHR also intensified the debate about the status of international jurisprudence in Colombia. Compared to Mexico, however, the context is different, not least because Colombia's Constitutional Court has always been open to international law. Greater openness notwithstanding, communicative entrepreneurship was still instrumental in overcoming reluctance to regulate the influence of Inter-American precedents. This suggests that as a mechanism of norm construction, communicative entrepreneurship is productive under a variety of conditions.

Colombia's 1991 constitution created a Constitutional Court, recognized new fundamental rights, and constitutionalized human rights treaties. Inspired by this architecture, the Constitutional Court has produced world-famous rulings demanding the redesign of public policies, with far-reaching budgetary and political implications (García-Villegas and Uprimny 2004; Rodríguez-Garavito 2011). One of the formulas developed to justify this rights-oriented jurisprudence is the "constitutionality block" doctrine, according to which laws subject to constitutionality tests must be read in light of international law (Uprimny 2008). Anchoring arguments in international law constitutes "a core part of the court's assertion of power" (Landau 2015, 155-156) because it allows it to legitimize controversial decisions.

The constitutionalization of human rights treaties and the concomitant development of the constitutionality block since the mid-1990s, however, were not sufficient to automatically raise the profile of Inter-American precedents. Citations were almost nonexistent until the 2000s. According to a former clerk, "the majority believed that in order to cement its authority the court ought to find its own voice." Several interviewees also mentioned lack of familiarity and highlighted the arrival of the Internet as a game changer. Another factor contributing to this neglect was the mismatch between the causes each court championed in the 1990s: whereas Colombia's Constitutional Court addressed socioeconomic rights, the IACtHR focused on transitional justice. When transitional justice cases reached the Constitutional Court in the mid-2000s, though, Inter-American precedents became more useful: "This topic was alien to us, so relying on Inter-American jurisprudence proved crucial."

By the time the IACtHR turned to communicative entrepreneurship, admittedly, the neglect of Inter-American precedents in Colombia was less severe than in Mexico. But important challenges still remained. In terms of institutionalizing the influence of human rights jurisprudence, the problem was less the absence of citations than the ways usage remained opportunistic. In 2000 the Constitutional Court authorized the use of Inter-American jurisprudence to define the content of fundamental rights, but did so briefly and vaguely (C-010/2000). As a result, judges "still didn't have any certainty about the rules relative to the incorporation of this jurisprudence." The outcome was an "instrumental use of international law" when judges needed to additional firepower, or "as a sign of cosmopolitanism and erudition."

A former judge explained that "finding the right formula took time" because of treaty silence on this point. Exacerbating this was that "citing jurisprudence is more complex than citing treaties. One is always more fearful when interpreting another court because it is hard to identify clear decision rules." At the heart of the matter, however, were concerns about the distribution of power inside the court and between the court and the IACtHR. Not regulating the practice meant sidestepping a thorny issue:

When the IACtHR launched the conventionality review doctrine, the Constitutional Court gradually became less reluctant to face these political and technical challenges. The IACtHR's nudges encouraged Colombian judges to hand down rulings clarifying the authority of international jurisprudence in a number of ways (C-442-11; SU-712-13; C-500-14). First, the Constitutional Court specified that although only decisions against Colombia are mandatory, judges must consider criteria expounded in precedents against other countries and, if necessary, provide reasons for departing from them. Second, the court indicated that the conventionality review did not imply an automatic transplant of Inter-American criteria. Inter-American precedents only have domestic implications when judges find unequivocal similarities between cases. Moreover, the court ruled that judges have to evaluate whether the domestic legal order already offers adequate protections. If this is the case, following Inter-American jurisprudence becomes unnecessary. In one ruling, for example, the Constitutional Court was asked to declare the unconstitutionality of libel laws, in line with an Inter-American judgment against Argentina. In turn, the court explained that its jurisprudence already limited the scope of these laws, rendering unnecessary any attempt to rid them as mandated by the IACtHR. Third, the court found that isolated precedents do not constitute sufficient grounds for exercising the conventionality review. Inter-American doctrines only become relevant when the IACtHR reiterates the same criteria in several cases.

Interviewees also suggest that the conventionality review produced an intense conversation about the status of Inter-American jurisprudence because the doctrine was launched at a time when Inter-American case law had become more diverse. The rise in thematic areas covered by the IACtHR increased the risk of clashes between courts. More worryingly, being forced to blindly follow Inter-American criteria on such a diverse number of issues could set the Constitutional Court on collision course with domestic actors. The need to regulate the impact of international jurisprudence therefore became more pressing:

A clerk illustrated the court's reasoning with reference to a case in which transplanting IACtHR jurisprudence could have led to a conflict with the attorney general (SU-712-13):

The Colombian case shows that the robust constitutionalization of human rights treaties, or the presence of judges open to and knowledgeable of international law, do not automatically lead to the development of norms of transjudicial communication. Indeed, judges can be quite reluctant to regulate the influence of international jurisprudence. In this sense, communicative entrepreneurship is an effective mode of norm development that international courts can use to launch a productive conversation and overcome resistance. Importantly, the reaction of the Constitutional Court suggests that a top-down approach would have been counterproductive, possibly resulting in no progress at all in the creation of detailed scripts. Inviting and accepting contributions, by contrast, allowed the IACtHR to engage its local counterpart and ultimately led to greater clarity regarding the status of international precedents. This invitation interacted with local concerns about judicial autonomy to produce the desired effects.

Like in the Mexican case, there is nothing in the official record indicating that the IACtHR protested the new Colombian jurisprudence. A mute response is compatible with the notion that it behaved as a communicative entrepreneur, welcoming a collaborative approach. But this silence is by no means conclusive evidence. When asked about the Colombian case, however, Inter-American judges and clerks did indicate that they did not object to the Constitutional Court's criteria. An Inter-American judge even explained that openness to local views is crucial to improving human rights protections:

Conclusion

In this article, I argue that weak nonstate actors can bring about normative change even when they lack moral and epistemic certainty. They can become communicative entrepreneurs who invite others to talk, create venues for conversations to unfold, and thus transform partners into stakeholders who themselves help supply ideas about how to translate values into normative templates. I illustrated communicative entrepreneurship using the case of the IACtHR and its attempt to regulate the use of international jurisprudence. For an institution virtually ignored during its first twenty-five years of existence, this was not merely a procedural matter. It was rather a crucial objective designed to solidify its influence over the development of regional human rights protections and ensure that the tentacles of Inter-American jurisprudence could benefit victims of state abuse-all without the need for lengthy international litigation battles. The lack of a clear behavioral script to challenge and reform existing judicial habits could have undermined the project from the start. But the skillful deployment of nudges and networking strategies constructed the space, and the willingness, to debate a complex issue.

Contrasting the IACtHR's efforts to promote norms of transjudicial communication with its behavior in the propagation of the norm against impunity underscores the importance of uncertainty as a catalyst of communicative entrepreneurship. The issue of transjudicial communication had never been seriously debated before the IACtHR introduced the conventionality review doctrine and continued to be marred with uncertainty afterward. By contrast, whether amnesty laws favoring the perpetrators of egregious human rights violations are acceptable or not was a debate that had received a great deal of attention before the IACtHR's famous interventions in this norm cycle. During the 1990s, the Latin American human rights community produced a clear normative script that established the extent of states' responsibilities in the investigation and punishment of serious human rights crimes and formulated a detailed technical basis for rejecting amnesties. For example, an influential 1992 report by the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights, as well as the work of domestic NGOs and lower courts, especially in Argentina, operationalized the anti-impunity norm, turning the moral repudiation of amnesties into an actionable legal template (Sikkink 2011; Lessa and Payne 2012; Gonzalez-Ocantos 2016). Resultantly, the IACtHR chose a very different mode of engagement than that used to instigate norms of transjudicial communication. In a remarkable stream of rulings starting in 2001 against Peru, Chile, Brazil, and Uruguay, the court pushed for the adoption of this clear behavioral template, calling for the nullification of amnesties, and for states to support investigations and punish the perpetrators (Davis 2014).

My argument likely explains dynamics outside of the Inter-American system. For example, the European Court of Justice (ECJ), created in 1952 to ensure the even application of European law across members of the European Economic Community, also used communicative entrepreneurship to reduce uncertainty surrounding the legal status of its judgments and its relationship with national judges. The ensuing scripting exercise became a pillar of European legal integration. The "preliminary ruling" mechanism in Article 177 of the Treaty of Rome established an official channel for transjudicial communication, allowing national courts to seek ECJ advice on questions of European law. But in the 1960s, when the ECJ developed an interest in routinizing these referrals to expand its opportunities to interpret European law (and its authority), this mechanism remained an obscure clause. Local courts hardly considered using it (Alter 2001, 15). Moreover, we find no consensus concerning the place of European law in domestic legal system. The ECJ responded by starting to cautiously deploy jurisprudential nudges to incentivize referrals. Some of its rulings were "carefully crafted appeals to judicial ego" (Burley and Mattli 1993, 63), aimed at luring national courts. The ECJ presented itself as the "protector of the prerogatives of lower national courts" (Burley and Mattli 1993, 64), ruling that the resolution of certain issues required an exclusive dialogue between them and the ECJ. In addition, it planned outreach activities to engage judges in discussions about how to operationalize referral practices (Burley and Mattli 1993, 58-62; Helfer and Slaughter 1997, 303). Like in the Americas, nudging and networking ultimately transformed the choice architecture of national courts and promoted reactions from local actors that ultimately led to the development of scripts that created plausible paths for judges to engage with European law.

Research on communicative entrepreneurship could move forward in two directions. First, scholars could apply communicative entrepreneurship beyond the judicial realm, especially in domains where norms and their operationalization remain vague. Communicative entrepreneurship is likely to be particularly attractive to new institutions trying to find their bearings on the world stage or seeking to routinize precise rules of engagement with states, as well to activists who detect new challenges that lack off-the-shelf expert, technical, or political solutions. For instance, as debates about arms control (for example, Petrova 2016) move to the realm of cybersecurity, the absence of clear normative templates may encourage communicative entrepreneurship. Similarly, as the challenges stemming from climate change become more complex, environmental activists may need to shift from norm entrepreneurship to communicative entrepreneurship in order to bring together relevant stakeholders to define the contours of new normative scripts.

Second, some critical constructivists argue for inclusive participation in the development of new norms-and active contestation by all stakeholders thereafter-on moral and ethical grounds. They also contend that it creates benefits in terms of the acceptability and durability of norms (for example, Weiner 2017; Zimmermann 2017, chapter 8). The conceptual structure developed in this article offers a heuristic device to examine this proposition, for example, by comparing the consequences of norm and communicative entrepreneurship for norm legitimacy. Such undertakings would add an empirical component to what still remains a largely normative and theoretical literature.

Notes

Author's note: I would like to thank Matthew Broad, Geoff Dancy, Jody LaPorte, Giovanni Mantilla, Kevin Mazur, Rob Schub, Luis Schiumerini, Jazmin Sierra, Duncan Snidal, two anonymous reviewers, and especially, the International Studies Quarterly editorial team for excellent comments on previous versions of the article.

Ezequiel Gonzalez-Ocantos is an associate professor in the Department of Politics & IR at the University of Oxford and a professorial fellow of Nuffield College. He is the author of Shifting Legal Visions: Judicial Change and Human Rights Trials in Latin America (Cambridge University Press, 2016).

References

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Communicative Entrepreneurs: The Case of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights' Dialogue with National Judges

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Abstract. Many norms develop in the absence of clear templates for how to implement them. I argue that, even under these conditions, individuals and organizatio

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(New York) - Member countries of the International Criminal Court (ICC) should step up their political, practical and financial support so that the court can fully deliver on its global mandate, Human Rights Watch said today. The annual session of the ICC's Assembly of States Parties will take place in New York City from December 4 to 14, 2023.

The ICC's docket includes Darfur, Israel/Palestine, and Ukraine, underscoring the court's essential role in bringing accountability and defending the rule of law in the world's conflicts. This year is the 25th anniversary of the adoption of the Rome Statute, the ICC's founding treaty. Years of holding down budget increases to a bare minimum, as some member countries insisted on a zero nominal growth approach,has left the court without the resources it needs to support its work.

"The ICC aims to ensure that no one is above the law, but without consistent government support across its docket there is a risk of replicating double standards at the expense of victims' access to justice," said Liz Evenson, international justice director at Human Rights Watch. "Member countries at their annual meeting should speak out for equitable access to justice for all victims in situations before the court and back that commitment by bolstering the court's budget."

At this Assembly session, ICC member countries will make critical decisions for the functioning of the court, including setting its budget for 2024 and electing new ICC and Assembly leadership. Human Rights Watch issued a 20-page report making recommendations for the session to ICC member countries.

Member countries should demonstrate their commitment to impartial justice through action to set the court's budget for next year at the level it needs to do its job in full independence, Human Rights Watch said. In 2022, ICC member countries approved an increase to the court's annual budget that barely covered costs associated with inflation and was far below what the court had requested. While some countries have pledged additional voluntary funding, this is not a sustainable funding model and raises concerns of politicization of the court's work.

The ICC is currently working in 17 situations with three ongoing trials and anchors a broader system for delivering justice for international crimes through courts at the national and international levels. The ICC depends on state cooperation, including for arrests. In August, South Africa confirmed its obligation to arrest Russian President Vladimir Putin ahead of a BRICS summit to be held in the country given the ICC's outstanding warrant against him for serious crimes in Ukraine.

Government support is needed more consistently across the court's docket, Human Rights Watch said.

The ICC prosecutor, Karim Khan, has an ongoing investigation into the situation in Palestine, which is a party to the ICC. Khan spoke to the court's mandate in the context of the hostilities between Israel and Palestinian armed groups during a visit to Egypt in late October. He visited Israel and Palestine ahead of the Assembly session. On November 17, Bangladesh, Bolivia, the Comoros, Djibouti, and South Africa-all ICC member countries- referred the situation of Palestine to the court's prosecutor. Palestine had also referred the situation in 2018 and affirmed its commitment to cooperate with the court.

Only a few ICC member countries have addressed the ICC's role in the Palestine situation. This contrasts with the responses of many governments to Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. It has led to perceptions of double standards in government support for international justice, putting the ICC's legitimacy at risk.

ICC member countries should use the Assembly session as a platform to formally speak about the court's critical role in fighting impunity across all situations on its docket, including in the context of the hostilities between Israel and Palestinian armed groups, Human Rights Watch said.

Given the court's mandate to bring justice for the world's worst crimes, recurrent efforts to thwart accountability are unsurprising. In 2023, Russian authorities opened criminal cases and issued arrest warrants against the ICC prosecutor and several of the court's judges. In September, the ICC was the target of a serious cyber attack with the objective of espionage. The court has not yet been able to confirm who was responsible for the attack.

The Assembly presidency, the court, and some member countries have condemned these efforts to intimidate or obstruct the court's work, in line with an important strategy adopted in 2022 to oppose threats and attacks against "the Court, its officials, and those cooperating with it [emphasis added]." This strategy has yet to be used, however, to address threats to human rights groups advocating for justice before the court. In October, member countries adopted a set of "guidelines and recommendations for enhancing the security of participants in the work of the Assembly." At the Assembly, member countries should commit to doing more to protect civic space so that human rights defenders can advance justice before the ICC without fear of reprisal, Human Rights Watch said.

The Assembly will also elect six new judges, one-third of the court's bench. The merit-based election of highly qualified court officials is among the most important elements of ICC members' stewardship of the court. For this election, candidates faced a novel procedure to assess their "high moral character," a requirement for ICC officials under the Rome Statute. This was an important stepping stone toward the permanent vetting process for all elections of ICC officials, expected to be established during this Assembly session.

Member countries will also determine the future of the review by independent experts of the court's performance, which in 2020 produced nearly 400 recommendations for change. Over the last three years, member countries and the court have assessed and started implementing the recommendations. As they decide on the next steps, member countries should remain committed to a structured follow-up that fosters continued efforts to strengthen the court's delivery of justice, Human Rights Watch said. This should include annual reporting by the court and within the Assembly on how the recommendations are being implemented, while maintaining respect for the court's judicial and prosecutorial independence, and ongoing and meaningful civil society engagement.

"ICC member countries' willingness to support its impartial mandate faces a crucial test as many around the world are asking whether international law genuinely applies to all," Evenson said. "Member countries should not miss the opportunity of the Assembly of States Parties session to denounce double standards and commit the support and resources the court needs to live up to the legitimate expectations of victims and affected communities."

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ICC: Combat Double Standards for Justice

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Member countries of the International Criminal Court (ICC) should step up their political, practical and financial support so that the court can fully deliver on its global mandate.

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The indigenous Sámi people living in the Arctic have a saying: "Eennâm Lii Eellim". Land is life. These communities rely on the land and the wildlife living there for their survival and the preservation of their culture. But climate change is threatening the fragile balance of people and nature in the Arctic region.

Recently, the largest source of rare minerals in Europe was found in the northern area of Kiruna, Sweden. Rare minerals are used to produce high-tech goods, like batteries for electric cars, electronic devices, and wind turbines. It might sound like good news for Europe, but the discovery has wreaked havoc on the indigenous community, the Sámi.

For the Sámi, reindeer are vital to their way of life. They provide for food, clothing, snow shoes, tools and even simple things like buttons. Reindeer are inextricably linked to the continued survival - and cultural heritage - of the Sámi, going back countless generations. We learned that the Sámi arrived in northern Scandinavia at the end of the last ice age. As the existing mine near Kiruna keeps expanding, reindeer herders in the area have to quit their traditions and livelihoods.

Unique wildlife is under attack in the Arctic

The Kiruna mine expansion is not only dangerous for the Sámi. The impact on the unique Arctic flora and fauna has been fatal. Arctic wildlife and landscapes are unique and irreplaceable. Global warming and industrial development are a serious risk for the sensitive biodiversity. This is because they render habitats uninhabitable for the wildlife that depend on them. Many species are unable to move further north due to global warming and melting ice caps. They're staring extinction in the face. Once you get to the northernmost tip of the world, there's literally nowhere else to go.

In the fight for land in the Arctic, local communities seem to lose time after time. Mining, forestry and energy production play a significantly bigger role than the thriving Arctic culture when it comes to political decision-making at all levels. The EU should be a force for protecting the Arctic as a global heritage. But the Sámi in Kiruna say that the way the European Commission is approaching the green transition is threatening their way of life and their very existence. An EU strategy that was built to protect life on the earth should not seek success with the price of social and cultural harm.

No climate justice without social justice - also in the Arctic

Don't get me wrong - renewable energies are the solution to the climate crisis. But what we really need is a change of mindset. Everlasting growth in a renewable world will still put pressure on ecosystems and untouched lands as we continue to guzzle more energy and resources. No matter if it is oil, gas or rare ressources. Climate justice includes social justice, and especially the integrity of indigenous communities and their lands. Any violation towards this is not acceptable.

But what is at stake in the Arctic? How do the Sámi live in precarious balance with the changing wildlife and climate? And how can we support the local communities in the Arctic who are preserving the biodiversity and scenery of the area, and by extension their culture?

A fragile balance - how is climate change threatening the Arctic?

In the Arctic, climate change and the loss of biodiversity are more interlinked than anywhere else on Earth. Temperatures in the Arctic are rising four times as fast as the global average. We are already witnessing the changes - with melting sea ice, warming permafrost and the Arctic treeline accelerating towards the pole. What is happening in the Arctic is likely to provoke extreme temperature events in other areas of the world. The effects will be global - and not only environmental, but financial, cultural, and social.

The Arctic is home to more than four million people. Approximately 10 percent of them are indigenous. The indigenous people of the Arctic hold significant cultural, social, and historical differences. But a common feature for most is the fact that they have already undergone substantial changes to their way of life. This is due to national policies, industrialisation and social change.

Globally, the lands inhabited by indigenous peoples contain 80% of the world's remaining biodiversity. Besides undergoing changes, what connects the indigenous peoples all around the world is their connection to the land that they live on.

Climate change is threatening the life of the Sámi people

In Northern Europe, the Sámi people inhabit the region of Sápmi. Sápmi covers large parts of northern Norway, Sweden, Finland, and the Murmansk Oblast in Russia. Traditional Sámi livelihoods are reindeer herding, fishing, hunting, gathering and handicrafts. Climate change is threatening the continuity of these livelihoods and culture.I

One example of this is how global warming has changed the weather conditions in the Arctic. Warmer global temperatures have meant that there is now more rain falling in the Arctic than snow. Rain creates a layer of ice on top of the snow when it freezes. This prevents animals like reindeer from getting to their food. This has devastating consequences on wildlife, but also on cultural practices, like reindeer herding.

Another example is that of ice roads, a typical form of transportation in the Arctic. The warming weather has caused changes in the river and lake ice. This is making it very dangerous - or impossible - to use ice roads as a way of transportation. Climate change is deeply affecting people in many communities. But in the case of the Arctic it's threatening the cultural survival of the indigenous population.

What is "Crusty Snow"? The eight seasons of the Arctic

The Arctic year has never been divided into four seasons. Instead, the people living in the Arctic have structured time into eight periods.

From "First Snow" to "Crusty Snow", to "Harvest Season" and "Colourful Autumn". Arctic seasons are almost like rhythms that help the people adapt to the rhythms of the river, the forest, and the landscape. They aren't defined by the Earth's rotation, but by the changing of culture during the time of year.

Spring brings with it crusted snow, meaning it is safe to get on your skis without falling into the snow while wandering through the forests and the fells. When the ice in the rivers breaks up in the late spring, and starts its journey downriver, it means the first plants will soon begin to bloom and the reindeers will give birth to calves. The landscape suddenly fills with life, new and returning.

Based on the rhythms of the year, the locals know what to prepare for. When it is safe to walk on the river ice. When it is the right time to move reindeers from winter to summer pastures. Fishing and hunting - every task has its season. This is especially true for the indigenous Sámi community of northern Europe. They define their years by the behaviour of the reindeer. Reindeer are extremely sensitive to variations in weather and temperatures.

Land is life - how do the indigenous Sámi live in balance with nature?

The Sámi in the Arctic have a saying: " Eennâm Lii Eellim ". Land is life.

By adjusting their daily lives with the changing of seasons, the Sámi balance their livelihoods in nature. They avoid scarcity of food and other resources they need to survive. A long history of living on the land has made it possible for the Sámi people to use their traditional ecological knowledge to protect and restore their environment's biodiversity.

The northern way of life and the northern state of mind are a mentality which imitates nature. Nature is in a constant state of change - moving from one season to another - and so are the people. Always preparing for tomorrow. While this being one of the most defining parts of not only the Sámi culture, but the arctic culture overall, the eight seasons still define the thinking and acting of the people in the area through all generations. But because of the effects of climate change, and the increasing pressure for exploitation of the mineral deposits and the land use of the region, the Sámi are unsure about the changes happening in the landscape.

The river, that would always tell us what tomorrow would look like, can't do that anymore after being strangled by hydropower plants. The warming climate has brought longer summers and warmer winters, merging the eight seasons into four with mid-seasons disappearing. It is becoming harder and harder to prepare for tomorrow, without the signs that we were used to seeing by observing nature.

The green transition must also be fair: can climate adaptation turn into a cultural threat?

Arctic regions are witnessing some of the most rapid rises in temperature. Climate adaptation (taking actions to reduce the harm caused by climate change, like switching to renewable energy) is a priority. But to do this in a fair way, we must be mindful of the existing discrimination against indigenous communities.

It's the wealthy western civilisation that has caused the climate crisis. But the people who are the least responsible are paying the highest price. Indigenous peoples are among the first to face the direct consequences of climate change. This is due to their dependence and close relationship to the environment. On top of that, climate change exacerbates the difficulties already faced by indigenous peoples. This includes the exploitation of their land and resources, human rights violations, and political marginalisation.

We need to stop exploiting the Arctic now

Growing pressure in the Arctic and conflict over land is pitting different interest groups against each other. In the case of the Sámi people, both sovereign states and multi-billion-dollar companies are now interested in the same land the Sámi have herded for centuries.

Historically, the Global North has achieved a high standard of living by exploiting the labour and land of the Global South. But this can also take place within a country or an area. In the case of the Arctic, land that was previously frozen solid is becoming more and more accessible for industry due to the melting of permafrost and the Arctic Ocean.

We also need to be careful of 'green colonialism'. As we invest in renewable energy and infrastructure, it can often happen at the expense of marginalized communities, like indigenous communities. Take, for example, the giant wind farms built in northern Norway which have destroyed reindeer pastures and migration routes.

Getting justice for the Sámi - how can the EU help?

If we want to make sure that EU laws protect Sámi rights and culture, the Sámi must be involved in making those laws.

In the last couple of years, the Sámi Council, a voluntary Sámi organisation that promotes Sámi rights and interests, created the Sapmi project. Established with EU funding, the aim was to raise awareness about the Sámi people within the European institutions. Sámi civil society became involved in EU decision-making processes. Luckily the Sámi people´s concerns were heard on crucial new EU policies, such as the Farm to Fork agricultural strategy, the Biodiversity strategy, the Just Transition Fund, and the European Climate Pact.

Meanwhile, in the European Parliament, our Greens/EFA MEP, Alice Bah Kuhnke, who is from Sweden, has called for "real political leadership". She calls for a climate transition that must not come at the expense of climate justice.

We still have a lot of questions to answer, and a lot more to learn about our Arctic indigenous peoples. As the pressure on the Arctic grows, the question at the centre of it all is: who has the right to the land? And how can we find solutions for a more inclusive and sustainable future? One thing is for sure, the traditional Sámi world view can teach us all much more than we ever thought.

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Sámi wisdom - How climate change is changing life in the Arctic

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Global warming is changing the Arctic. But how does it affect the life of the Indigenous people, the Sámi? And what can we do to stop it?

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75,000 inhabitants in parts of the Arctic across Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia, face a threat to their cultural identity and way of life due to climate change.

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More communities will rely on American Red Cross services as the climate crisis causes more intense and frequent extreme weather across the country. In a recent LinkedIn live discussion, moderated by Ashleigh Banfield, Red Cross Greater New York board member and host of "Banfield" on NewsNation, we asked Jennifer Pipa, vice president of Disaster Programs at the Red Cross, about the ways we're adapting our services and growing our disaster response capacity to help people affected by unrelenting disasters.
What are the significant ways the climate crisis is affecting disaster response?
"We are seeing more disasters that are significantly larger, impacting communities at a much higher rate in today's world than even say 10, 15 or 20 years ago. They're larger, and they're more destructive, and that has a significant impact on our organization and how we're challenged to deliver our mission.

"I've gone back to the same communities year after year after year, and it is heartbreaking to see the same families inside of our shelters because they've been displaced multiple years because of hurricanes. To watch a family weather destruction of their home, or significant impact on their home, repair it, get back on their feet, and then, two years later run into them in a Red Cross shelter again, it's that repetitive impact that just drains the resilience right out of a community.

"Places that haven't historically been impacted are unfamiliar with what a disaster relief operation looks like, of how you help your community recover. We're in places like Vermont and Arkansas and Kentucky. These are areas that historically as an organization we haven't had to respond to for a large-scale disaster.

"We see a huge demand for mental health. Those are the primary barriers that families and communities are telling us that keep them from moving on to their next step."
With the climate crisis causing devastating impacts in communities, how is the Red Cross responding? What are the tangible efforts you're making?
"We're really looking at what are large-scale disaster response looks like. How do we staff it? How do we take care of those communities? How do we connect with that community on an authentic level to understand how that community wants to navigate its own recovery? The second is focused on additional financial assistance. It's one of the things that as an organization we are well positioned to do, and we provide immediate financial assistance usually within about 10 to 14 days after a disaster. What we've seen is that it isn't enough. There is a place for us as an organization to make additional investments in individuals and families.

"The third is around those local partner networks. When we talk about health, hunger and housing, those are three major barriers that we're seeing. Those aren't necessarily mission services that fall within the Red Cross' expertise, but there are people in those communities who do that every single day. And because of that, we can connect with those providers before a disaster happens, help support them in becoming resilient, and then, we know that will translate into better outcomes for individuals and families.

"Last, we are a volunteer-supported organization. We don't do anything in this organization without the power of mobilizing volunteers. If you're going to run operations concurrently, you got to have the volunteer backup to do that. So, there is an acknowledgement that we need to grow our volunteer base in order to meet the mission delivery that we want in this organization."
What is the Red Cross doing to empower local communities to become more resilient?
"Our Community Adaptation Program focuses on very local community blocks that are struggling every single day, but then at the same time, we're getting these repetitive impacts from these large-scale disaster relief operations. We talked about the three major barriers, housing, hunger or food insecurity, and then, the physical and mental health impacts.

"There are tons of nonprofits out there that do that today, but if they get impacted and they go offline during a disaster, people will turn to us because we can provide that as a proxy for a short period of time. But we know that in order for people to return back to their community, that infrastructure needs to be present and engaged and able to deliver their mission as well.

"In Arkansas, we have this group of women with the Frenchman's Bayou of the First Baptist Church and they provide food for food-insecure families. And their feeding distribution had been about 50 people a month. But we know that if we could increase their capacity, this would do two amazing things. One, it helps that community every single day by increasing its capacity. Second, it helps get their unit back online sooner when a disaster strikes. So, we help them invest in a box truck.

"That means that they're taking better care of their community every single day. And when the next disaster happens, because we know it, they will be well positioned to walk alongside us in that disaster relief operation and help serve people."
What can everyday people do?
"The first thing you can do is take preparedness actions today to make sure that you are ready for whatever. That means, becoming weather aware about what the most likely risks are that might pose a problem for you and your family and your community. It means being weather-aware about alerts and notifications. We have a Red Cross Emergency app, which is free to download, which will send you alerts. It also allows you to monitor other people's locations.

"The second is volunteering with us. You don't have to necessarily volunteer in light of a disaster. You can be a blood donor ambassador, which welcomes people and provides them with refreshments and snacks after they've donated.

"The third is donating blood. We are the largest single provider of blood, about 40% of the nation's blood supply comes from our organization. We rely on the generosity of donors to roll up their sleeve and donate blood. I am a lifelong blood donor. I passed my six-gallon mark a couple of months ago.

"There are so many opportunities for people to engage with our organization. It's so flexible depending on where you are in your life and what your circumstances are, but this is only getting harder. It's only getting busier. The work we do is incredibly important, but we rely on the generosity of volunteers, donors and partners to do that, and we couldn't do it without people raising their hand and helping us."
Learn more
Wanted to take a deeper dive into the ambitious Red Cross plan to address the climate crisis? Here are three ways you can learn more about it:

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How Red Cross Disaster Relief Efforts Are Evolving Amid Climate Crisis: A Chat with Red Cross VP of Disaster Programs Jennifer Pipa

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More communities will rely on American Red Cross services as the climate crisis causes more intense and frequent extreme weather across the country. Jennifer Pipa, vice president of Disaster Programs at the Red Cross, talks about the ways we're adapting our services and growing our disaster response capacity to help people affected by unrelenting disasters.

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Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR)

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The IACHR is a principal and autonomous organ of the Organization of American States (

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Allegations of Genocide under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (Ukraine v.

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Carnegie Mellon University's Heinz College

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By Michael Cunningham

A conversation about the Black Lives Matter Movement, and the legacy that sparked it, with one of the world's leading experts on policing
Professor Daniel Nagin is the 2014 recipient of the prestigious Stockholm Prize on Criminology, an elected fellow of the American Society of Criminology, and the Teresa and H. John Heinz III University Professor of Public Policy and Statistics. His research focuses on the evolution of criminal and antisocial behaviors over the life course the deterrent effect of criminal and non-criminal penalties on illegal behaviors, and the development of statistical methods for analyzing longitudinal data.

In the wake of recent incidences of lethal violence involving law enforcement officials in Baton Rouge, Falcon Heights, and Dallas, we sat down with Nagin to talk to him about what factors led to these events, why there is apparent mistrust between citizens and law enforcement officials, and what policy, research, and training measures can be taken to help prevent these situations in the future.
Professor Daniel Nagin
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Michael Cunningham: Based on your research, are the events in recent years and weeks that have led to the growth of the Black Lives Matter movement reflective a small number of outlying incidents, or is it symptomatic of a systemic problem?

Daniel Nagin: The Black Lives Matter Movement has to be understood in the context of the historical legacy of the ill treatment of blacks by the police and the criminal justice system and American political and social institutions more generally. That legacy is a fact. The Movement, I think, is a reflection of and reaction to that legacy. I don't think people should be surprised by it, and it's part of why people should listen to the Black Lives Matter position. At the same time getting people to listen has been greatly complicated by the lethal ambushes of police officers in Dallas and Baton Rouge.

MC: Live telecasting or near-real time videos of events as they are happening makes them so much more apparent and visceral, as opposed to reading a news article about it.

DN: When you see video, for example, of the incident in North Charleston, where a police officer gunned down a man who was running away from him-you can't deny those facts. I don't know what motivated this cop to do it, but I'm not surprised that black people interpreted it as still another instance of their mistreatment by the police.

MC: You mentioned recent studies about lethal force. In terms of research, what do we know about the disproportionate targeting of minorities, particularly African-Americans, by law enforcement agencies?

DN: Studies on this question come to conflicting conclusions. Some studies have concluded that minorities are disproportionately targeted, and others reach the opposite conclusion. In fact, in a recent study on this issue, Roland Fryer from Harvard reached the conclusion that it depends on what kind of tactic you're talking about. He concluded that for non-lethal uses of force, involving things like handcuffing the person, shoving them, or having some physical contact with them, those events were in the order of 10 to 25 percent more likely for blacks than for whites. On the other hand, he reached the conclusion that, if anything, lethal use of force is more common among whites than blacks. So it's hard to draw really strong conclusions one way or the other on this issue.

MC: Why don't researchers currently have a better answer to this question?

DN: I think there are a couple of reasons for that. One is that we simply don't have very good data about these incidences. As surprising as this is, there is not a national database where you can confidently get a count of the number of people against which police used lethal violence, let alone on instances when they discharge firearms. So the studies that have been done are based on data from specific localities that are often of uneven quality. For this reason alone, findings may differ across studies.

The Black Lives Matter Movement has to be understood in the context of the historical legacy of the ill treatment of blacks by the police and the criminal justice system and American political and social institutions more generally. That legacy is a fact. Professor Daniel Nagin

Another issue is that, conceptually, this is a really hard problem. And it's a hard problem because there are differences across racial and ethnic groups in the frequency that they commit crime, which puts some groups in contact with the police at a rate that is disproportionate to their presence in the population. Taking account of those differences in involvement in crime is not easy to do from a statistical perspective.

The problem is made even further difficult because we also live in a racially segregated society. So, if you are going to send the police where there is the most crime, you're also going to wind up sending the police to what are typically racially segregated communities. For example, there was a study done of the locations of "stop, question, and frisk" in New York City. SQFs tended to be heavily concentrated in so-called crime "hot spots," which themselves tend to be disproportionately located in minority communities.

So it's conceptually a hard problem to grapple with because it is so complex. But the fact that we don't have good data on these kinds of incidences is unforgivable. These are the two main reasons why we don't currently have a better answer to the question of whether black and other minorities are disproportionately targeted on account of their race or ethnicity.

MC: In addition to collecting better data, what are some other factors that will help to solve this issue?

DN: The problem of data can be solved, and it should be solved. But even if it is solved, the data can only help us understand and explain the problem. It can't fix the problem. Once you use data to identify what the problem is, then you're going to have to change what the police do, and how they interact with the public. And in that regard, there is wide agreement among policing scholars that the research on the effectiveness of police training is woefully inadequate. There are very few careful studies on what's effective and what's not effective in changing the behavior of police in the field.

MC: Can you provide an example of that, or a hypothetical question that you would like to answer through this type of research?

DN: For example: when police do use force, how well considered is it? Would a trained observer conclude that the use of force was necessary and appropriate? Was there a conceivable way that the use of force could have been avoided by some kind of de-escalation tactic?

The comparison I would give is that police, in general, do not receive anywhere near the level of training that we give to the members of our military on how to control their emotions and respond in a way that is going to be effective and constructive in conflict situations. People in our military, and in the best militaries in the world, get intensive training in those kinds of things, and by and large police don't get anywhere near that level of training.

MC: As a point of comparison, where do police stand compared to the military in terms of conflict training?

DN: Again, there is not really good data on training, but I think that it's well understood that, in general, it's nowhere near as complete and thorough as in the military. Part of the issue with training is that, in the United States, there are over 18,000 police departments, and most of them are very small. And when you have these little police departments, the capacity to properly train the police officers and establish a culture of accountability is really limited. So I think there's an important need to consolidate the number of police departments that exist nationwide, for a variety of reasons.

The idea is not to have a safe police state. The idea is to have a safe democratic society. Professor Daniel Nagin

MC: From a policy standpoint, what effect do you think recent events will have on policy procedures and oversight in law enforcement on different levels?

DN: I think that we already see it happening. Police executives are talking about the importance of training police to better interact with people in the community, and about using other methods to try to diffuse tense situations. There's also this idea of implicit bias. All of these notions are laudable, but getting back to my prior point: If you were to candidly ask a police chief, "tell me the proven methods to do 'X,' 'Y,' and 'Z,'" the chief wouldn't be able to honestly respond to that question, because hardly any of them have been properly evaluated. So everybody is kind of flying by the seat of their pants, or making decisions based on overblown claims about the effectiveness of these various training programs. Therefore, whether they are reacting in an effective way to these events is hard to know.

Right now, for obvious reasons, the pendulum is focused very much on what the police can do to improve their credibility in the community. 20 years ago, when crime rates were high, the focus was on doing anything they could to reduce the crime rate. What police departments ultimately have to do is to recognize that both of these values are important. It's important that they do things to help make the community safe. But it is also important that they do things in a way that leaves the community with confidence and trust in them, and to keep in mind that sometimes these two different objectives can wind up being in conflict. They've got to balance these two objectives, and know that one shouldn't have the status to trump the other. The idea is not to have a safe police state. The idea is to have a safe democratic society.

MC: In your research and experience in this area, are there certain strategies that law enforcement officials can use to prevent these situations from occurring?

DN: It is clear that police presence at places where there is a lot of crime-I call this the "sentinel" role in policing-can be very effective in preventing crime. A simple analogy is that nobody is going to rob a liquor store if a cop is standing right outside. The key for police officers is using that presence to interact with citizens in a way that doesn't create conflict.

MC: Do you think there is any hope in solving this challenge?

DN: I am optimistic and hopeful that the current tensions will recede. But it is important to keep in mind that, over the long haul, these things are not going to be resolved unless resources are committed to having good measurement systems to collect quality data on what the police are doing in regard to the use of force. The necessary resources also have to be committed to generally having better data systems for monitoring how communities feel about the police, and to developing training systems where police are trained to use to what are known to be effective methods both for improving community trust, and also for preventing crime. Good intentions alone are not going to make our communities safe and solve the problem of citizen distrust of the police in some communities.

Learn more about Daniel Nagin

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Police, Violence, and Data: The Black Lives Matter Movement

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By Michael Cunningham A conversation about the Black Lives Matter Movement, and the legacy that sparked it, with one of the world's leading experts on policing Professor Daniel Nagin is the 2014 recipient of the prestigious Stockholm Prize on Criminology, an elected fellow of the American Society of Criminology, and the Teresa and H.

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Thousands of children are recruited and used in armed conflicts across the world. Between 2005 and 2022, more than 105,000 children were verified as recruited and used by parties to conflict, although the actual number of cases is believed to be much higher.

Often referred to as "child soldiers," these boys and girls suffer extensive forms of exploitation and abuse that are not fully captured by that term. Warring parties use children not only as fighters, but as scouts, cooks, porters, guards, messengers and more. Many, especially girls, are also subjected to gender-based violence.

Children become part of an armed force or group for various reasons. Some are abducted, threatened, coerced or manipulated by armed actors. Others are driven by poverty, compelled to generate income for their families. Still others associate themselves for survival or to protect their communities. No matter their involvement, the recruitment and use of children by armed forces is a grave violation of child rights and international humanitarian law.

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Children recruited by armed forces or armed groups

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Thousands of boys and girls are used as soldiers, cooks, spies and more in armed conflicts around the world