Harsch Publishes Journal Article on International Courts
Michael Harsch, Visiting Assistant Professor of International Relations at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, published a recent journal article on international courts and public opinion.
Harsch’s article, entitled “International Courts and Public Opinion: Explaining the CJEU’s Role in Protecting Terror Suspects’ Rights,” was published in the September 2019 issue of the Journal of Common Market Studies.
From the abstract of the article:
Under what conditions can regional and international courts (ICs) make decisions against their governments’ preferences? To answer this much debated question, we develop a new, majoritarian model of state‐IC relations. It posits that in cases where well‐established ICs’ positions are congruent with policy‐specific public opinion in leading member states, ICs can rule against their governments’ position. We apply our approach to a series of landmark decisions by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) regarding United Nations sanctions against terror suspects. We find that the CJEU was able to harness growing public support to strengthen terror suspects’ rights, punish states for superficial compliance with its rulings and ultimately broaden the Court’s judicial review powers. Our analysis suggests that ICs can be agents of legal change and advance human rights against governments’ resistance, but this role is conditional on the presence of public support.
Michael Harsch is a Visiting Assistant Professor of International Relations at the Pardee School and a Fellow at the NYU Center on International Cooperation (CIC). His research examines global and local institutions’ role in promoting security, effective government, and economic development, with a focus on fragile and conflict-affected states. He is the author of The Power of Dependence: NATO-UN Cooperation in Crisis Management (Oxford University Press, 2015). He is currently completing his second book, which investigates the enduring success of “islands of stability” in war-torn countries. In addition, he co-leads a grant-funded project analyzing donor strategies for managing risks in conflict and disaster-prone areas, and their implications for aid effectiveness.