Since the first attempts by states to use law to regulate armed conflict, legal constraints have often failed to protect civilians from the adverse effects of war. Advances in military technology have usually not improved this situation and have instead made law even more distant and less relevant to the suffering of civilians in wartime.1 The massive, indiscriminate incendiary bombing campaigns against major urban areas in World War II spoke volumes about the irrelevance of fundamental legal principles and rules designed to protect civilian populations in wartime. Law and lawyers were in fact far removed, physically and operationally, from the cockpits of the United States bombers flying over Tokyo, whose aircrews were focused on surviving their missions. They struggled with limited information about their assigned targets and conducted their operations with rudimentary preflight instructions that directed them, for example, to avoid destroying the palace of the Japanese emperor but left them free to submerge entire residential areas of the city in a sea of flames.

Forty years ago, the small and underdeveloped nations on the mountainous western edge of South America formed a regional integration pact to promote economic growth, regulate foreign investment, and harmonize national laws. Overall, their enterprise has not turned out well. Riven by political schisms, economic shocks, and weak domestic legal and judicial systems, the five principal countries of the Andean Community—Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador,Peru, and Venezuela— have failed to live up to their potential as South America's second largest trading bloc. The member states have relaunched the Andean integration project and revised its policies on multiple occasions, with at best only mixed results. Not surprisingly, most commentators have ignored the Andean Community or dismissed it as a failure.

Why do international institutions behave as they do? International organizations (IOs) have emerged as significant actors in global governance, whether they are overseeing monetary policy, setting trade or labor standards, or resolving a humanitarian crisis. They often execute international agreements between states and markedly influence domestic law, which makes it important to analyze how international institutions behave and make policy. Conducting an ethnographic analysis of the internal dynamics of IOs, including their formal and informal norms, incentive systems, and decision-making processes, can usefully aid in understanding institutional behavior and change. This article analyzes the organizational culture of one particularly powerful international institution—the World Bank (the Bank)—and explores why the Bank has not adopted a human rights policy or agenda.

In 2005, when James Wolfensohn announced that he would not seek a third term as president of the World Bank, few doubted that another United States national, the choice of the U.S. president, would take his place. Each of the previous eight presidents of the bank had been an American, dating back to the international financial institution's establishment in 1946,and despite private and public grousing by some over the Bush administration's eventual choice of Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz as Wolfensohn's successor, the appointment was never truly in jeopardy. When the bank's executive directors met to elect a new president, the vote was a foregone conclusion—not because the United States holds a majority of votes itself (it does not), but because a longstanding informal agreement between the United States and the bank's western European stakeholders prescribed that outcome.

Since the first attempts by states to use law to regulate armed conflict, legal constraints have often failed to protect civilians from the adverse effects of war. Advances in military technology have usually not improved this situation and have instead made law even more distant and less relevant to the suffering of civilians in wartime. The massive, indiscriminate incendiary bombing campaigns against major urban areas in World War II spoke volumes about the irrelevance of fundamental legal principles and rules designed to protect civilian populations in wartime. Law and lawyers were in fact far removed, physically and operationally, from the cockpits of the United States bombers flying over Tokyo, whose aircrews were focused on surviving their missions. They struggled with limited information about their assigned targets and conducted their operations with rudimentary preflight instructions that directed them, for example, to avoid destroying the palace of the Japanese emperor but left them free to submerge entire residential areas of the city in a sea of flames.

In the armed conflict between the United States and Al Qaeda, the legality of the government's detention scheme has been mired in confusion. The lack of clarity is especially acute with respect to the substantive criteria for defining who may be detained. A crucial determinant of the lawfulness of the scheme is whether international humanitarianlaw (IHL) permits the preventive detention of civilians, or particular groups of civilians. In addressing that issue, leading lawmakers, litigators, and adjudicators have misconstrued or misappropriated aspects of the IHL regime. Indeed, the confusion surrounding the current and future direction of U.S.detention policy stems in significant part from those misconceptions or misuses of the law.

At its 2008 session the United Nations International Law Commission (ILC) completed work on a set of nineteen draft articles on the law of transboundary aquifers and transmitted the draft to the General Assembly. The ILC recommended that the Assembly take note of the draft articles and at a later stage consider the elaboration of a convention based upon them.

In September 2007, Buddhist monks, students, democracy campaigners, and ordinary men, women, and children took their lives into their hands in the streets of Yangon, Myanmar, to protest against the ruling military regime. The protests had begun a month earlier with peaceful calls by the monks for the ruling authorities to reinstate subsidies on fuel and oil and alleviate crippling commodity prices, but quickly snowballed into mass demonstrations for democratic and social reforms and the release of all political prisoners.

On February 4,2008, shortly before Kosovo's controversial unilateral secession from Serbia on February 17 of that year, the Council of the European Union (EU) adopted a Joint Action creating the European Union Rule of Law Mission in Kosovo/EULEX (hereinafter EULEX), the largest and most important mission thus far undertaken within the common European foreign and defense policy. Although EULEX is first and foremost a European undertaking, it is also strongly backed by the United States, which agreed to shoulder 25 percent of the operating costs while the remaining costs would be shared by European and other states. In October 2008, the U.S. Department of State further agreed to provide EULEX with eighty police officers and up to eight judges and prosecutors.

In September 2007, Buddhist monks, students, democracy campaigners, and ordinary men, women, and children took their lives into their hands in the streets of Yangon, Myanmar, to protest against the ruling military regime. The protests had begun a month earlier with peaceful calls by the monks for the ruling authorities to reinstate subsidies on fuel and oil and alleviate crippling commodity prices, but quickly snowballed into mass demonstrations for democratic and social reforms and the release of all political prisoners.