The Politics of Precedent in International Law: A Social Network Application—ERRATUM

Owing to an oversight, the abstract for the article by Krzysztof J. Pelc in the August 2014 issue of American Political Science Review was omitted. The abstract is as follows:

There is no formal binding precedent in international law. Yet countries nonetheless expend considerable resources in seeking to shape legal precedent. Looking at the international trade regime, I demonstrate that while some disputes are initiated to gain market access for domestic groups, others are filed primarily to build favorable precedent which can be subsequently exploited, despite the fact that precedent lacks formal legal authority. I construct an original dataset consisting of the network of all rulings spanning the WTO period, and the cases they cite. An analysis of this network provides the first systematic evidence for the existence of “test cases” in international law: countries initiate commercially unimportant disputes to shape legal precedent to their advantage. Wealthy countries with high legal capacity appear better able to engage in these strategic filings, suggesting that in this case, greater legalization may have worrying distributional consequences. While binding precedent in international law remains a legal fiction, countries observably behave in a manner consistent with its existence.

We regret the oversight.