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Remarks by Karen J. Alter

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 March 2021

Karen J. Alter
Karen J. Alter*
Affiliation:
Professor of International Relations and International Law, Northwestern University; Permanent Visiting Faculty member, iCourts Center of Excellence in the Faculty of Law at the University of Copenhagen.
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Extract

Any speculation about the promise and future of multilateralism in Latin America turns fundamentally on what we mean by multilateralism. If multilateralism is defined in numeric terms, as any formal cooperative endeavor undertaken by three or more states, then it is easy to predict that multilateralism is going to be an ongoing feature international politics everywhere. If the question concerns the future of particular Latin American multilateral institutions, such as the Inter-American Human Rights system, Mercosur, or the Andean Community, there might be greater worry and room for disagreement. We would then want to know “what part of the inter-American Human Rights system/Mercosur/Andean Community are you talking about?”

Type
The Promise of Multilateralism in Latin America
Information
Proceedings of the ASIL Annual Meeting , Volume 114 , 2020 , pp. 324 - 328
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The American Society of International Law.

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Footnotes

These remarks draw on ideas published by the author several years before in a Northwestern University student publication.

References

1 John Ruggie, Multilateralism: The Anatomy of an Institution, in Multilateralism Matters 11 (John Ruggie ed., 1993) (emphasis added).

2 Id. at 586. Mazower's analysis of the history of the idea of global governance supports these claims. Mark Mazower, Governing the World: The History of an Idea (2013).

3 Arnulf Becker Lorca, Mestizo International Law: A Global Intellectual History 1842–1933 (2014); Juan Pablo Scarfi, The Hidden History of International Law in the Americas: Empire and Legal Networks (2017). I discuss these books in Karen J. Alter, The Empire of International Law?, 113 AJIL 183 (2019).

4 Alexandra Huneeus, et al., Cultures of Legality: Judicialization and Political Activism in Latin America (2011); Jeffrey K. Staton, Judicial Power and Strategic Communication (2010); Gretchen Helmke, Courts Under Constraints (2005).

5 This is not to say that constitutional courts always agree with how international law is being interpreted. Karen J. Alter, National Perspectives on International Constitutional Review: Diverging Optics, in Comparative Judicial Review (Erin Delaney & Rosalind Dixon eds., 2018). For a Latin American focused discussion see: Alexandra Huneeus, Constitutional Lawyers and the Inter-American Court's Varied Authority (Symposium: The Variable Authority of International Courts), 79 L. & Contemp. Probs. 79 (2016); Huneeus, et al., supra note 4.

6 Ruggie, supra note 1, at 585–86.

7 Tom Ginsburg, Authoritarian International Law?, 114 AJIL 221 (2020).

8 Karen J. Alter & Sophie Meunier, The Politics of International Regime Complexity, 7 Perspec. Pol. 13 (2009).

9 Karen J. Alter & Kal Raustiala, The Rise of International Regime Complexity, 14 Ann. Rev. L. & Soc. Sci. 329 (2018).

10 Id. at 345.

11 Id. at 346.