Mandatory Versus Default Rules: How Can Customary International Law Be Improved?

Customary International Law (CIL) is plagued with uncertainties about its sources, its content, its manipulability, and its normative attractiveness. The rise of law-making through multilateral treaties also makes the proper role of CIL increasingly uncertain. This is an opportune time, therefore, to be thinking of ways to revive and improve CIL. In a prior article, we argued that the Mandatory View of CIL, pursuant to which nations are barred from ever withdrawing unilaterally from rules of CIL, is functionally problematic, at least when applied across the board to all of CIL. We also suggested that CIL might be improved by allowing for exit rights similar to those allowed for under treaty regimes, many of which allow nations to withdraw unilaterally, at least after giving advance notice of their intent to do so. In a series of papers in Yale Law Journal’s online edition, a number of scholars - Lea Brilmayer, William Dodge, David Luban, Carlos Vázquez, and Isaias Tesfalidet - take issue with our proposal of such a Default View of CIL. In this essay, we respond to their arguments, while also emphasizing the need for additional consideration of the ways in which CIL might be improved

Withdrawing From International Custom

Treaties are negotiated, usually written down, and often subject to cumbersome domestic ratification processes. Nonetheless, nations often have the right to withdraw unilaterally from them. By contrast, the conventional wisdom is that nations never have the legal right to withdraw unilaterally from the unwritten rules of customary international law (CIL), a proposition that we refer to as the “Mandatory View.” It is not obvious, however, why it should be easier to exit from treaties than from CIL, especially given the significant overlap that exists today between the regulatory coverage of treaties and CIL, as well as the frequent use of treaties as evidence of CIL. In this Article, we consider both the intellectual history and functional desirability of the Mandatory View. We find that a number of international law publicists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries thought that CIL rules were sometimes subject to unilateral withdrawal, at least if a nation gave notice about its intent. We also find that the Mandatory View did not come to dominate international law commentary until sometime in the twentieth century, and, even then, there were significant uncertainties about how the Mandatory View would work in practice. Moreover, we note that there are reasons to question the normative underpinnings of the shift to the Mandatory View, in that it may have been part of an effort to bind “uncivilized” states to the international law worked out by a small group of Western powers. After reviewing this history, we draw on theories developed with respect to contract law, corporate law, voting rules, and constitutional design to consider whether it is functionally desirable to restrict opt-out rights to the extent envisioned by the Mandatory View. We conclude that, although there are arguments for restricting opt-out in select areas of CIL, it is difficult to justify the Mandatory View as a general account of how CIL should operate

Customary International Law and Withdrawal Rights in an Age of Treaties

The conventional wisdom among international law scholars is that, once a rule of customary international law (CIL) becomes established, nations never have the unilateral right to withdraw from it. In a recent article published in the Yale Law Journal, Withdrawing from International Custom, we termed this conventional wisdom the Mandatory View of CIL and distinguished it from a possible regime in which nations could opt out of at least some CIL rules through advance notice, something we termed a Default View of CIL. After considering the intellectual origins and functional desirability of the Mandatory View, as well as the extent to which withdrawal rights are available under treaties, we concluded that it was difficult to justify a complete ban on withdrawal from all rules of CIL. That article is the subject of a forthcoming symposium edition of the Duke Journal of Comparative and International Law, in which a variety of scholars raise important questions about our analysis and its implications. In this essay, we seek to advance the analysis set forth in Withdrawing by addressing four topics implicated by the symposium responses: the current state of CIL; the proper way to conceive of CIL and its relationship to treaties; how a shift away from the Mandatory View might occur in practice; and whether a shift to a Default View would make a meaningful difference in state practice. We also identify some issues that could benefit from additional research

Mandatory Versus Default Rules: How Can Customary International Law Be Improved?

Customary International Law (CIL) is plagued with uncertainties about its sources, its content, its manipulability, and its normative attractiveness. The rise of law-making through multilateral treaties also makes the proper role of CIL increasingly uncertain. This is an opportune time, therefore, to be thinking of ways to revive and improve CIL. In a prior article, we argued that the Mandatory View of CIL, pursuant to which nations are barred from ever withdrawing unilaterally from rules of CIL, is functionally problematic, at least when applied across the board to all of CIL. We also suggested that CIL might be improved by allowing for exit rights similar to those allowed for under treaty regimes, many of which allow nations to withdraw unilaterally, at least after giving advance notice of their intent to do so. In a series of papers in Yale Law Journal’s online edition, a number of scholars - Lea Brilmayer, William Dodge, David Luban, Carlos Vázquez, and Isaias Tesfalidet - take issue with our proposal of such a Default View of CIL. In this essay, we respond to their arguments, while also emphasizing the need for additional consideration of the ways in which CIL might be improved

Judicial Ability and Securities Class Actions

We exploit a new data set of judicial rulings on motions in order to investigate the relationship between judicial ability and judicial outcomes. The data set consists of federal district judges’ rulings on motions to dismiss, to approve the lead plaintiff, and to approve attorneys’ fees in securities class actions cases, and also judges’ decisions to remove themselves from cases. We predict that higher-quality judges, as measured by citations, affirmance rates, and similar criteria, are more likely to dismiss cases, reject lead plaintiffs, reject attorneys’ fees, and retain cases rather than hand them over to other judges. Our results are mixed, providing some but limited evidence for the hypotheses

The Dynamics of Contract Evolution

Contract scholarship has given little attention to the production process for contracts. The usual assumption is that the parties will construct the contract ex nihilo, choosing all the terms so that they will maximize the surplus from the contract. In fact, parties draft most contracts by slightly modifying the terms of contracts that they have used in the past, or that other parties have used in related transactions. A small literature on boilerplate recognizes this phenomenon, but little empirical work examines the process. This Article provides an empirical analysis by drawing on a data set of sovereign bonds. The authors show that exogenous factors are key determinants in the evolution of these contracts. We find an evolutionary pattern that roughly separates into three stages. Stage one where a particular standard form dominates; stage two where there are external shocks and marginal players experiment with deviations from the standard form; and stage three where a new standard emerges. The pattern confirms roughly to the S curve commonly described in the product innovation literature. The authors also find that more marginal law firms are likely to be leaders in innovation at early stages of the innovation cycle but that dominant law firms are the leaders at later stages

Polymorphous low grade adenocarcinoma-an unusual presentation

Polymorphous low-grade adenocarcinoma (PLGA) is a neoplasm that occurs frequently in the mucosa of the soft and hard palates, in the buccal mucosa and in the upper lip and is very rare within the nasopharynx. We present a case of PLGA, which presented as a nasal polyp

Pricing Terms in Sovereign Debt Contracts: A Greek Case Study With Implications for the European Crisis Resolution Mechanism

Conventional wisdom holds that boilerplate contract terms are ignored by parties, and thus are not priced into contracts. We test this view by comparing Greek sovereign bonds that have Greek choice-of-law terms and Greek sovereign bonds that have English choice-of-law terms. Because Greece can change the terms of Greek-law bonds unilaterally by changing Greek Law, and cannot change the terms of English-law bonds, Greek-law bonds should be riskier, with higher yields and lower prices. The spread between the two types of bonds should increase when the probability of Greek default increases. Recent events allow us to test this hypothesis, and the data are consistent with it. We suggest that sovereigns, like private entities, minimize their cost of credit by offering investors with different risk preferences bonds with different levels of risk, which is reflected in their terms, including choice-of-law clauses. The market understands this practice. This finding has implications for the design of the European Crisis Resolution Mechanism (ECRM), which is currently being debated. To the extent the goal of the new restructuring mechanism is to force private investors to take better precautions, ex ante, the restructuring authorities would be well advised to abandon the past practice of largely ignoring variations in the boilerplate of sovereign debt contracts and giving equal treatment to different types of debt