Transnational Lawmaking Coalitions is the first comprehensive analysis of the role and impact of informal collaborations in the UN human rights treaty bodies. Issues as central to international human rights as the right to water, abortion, torture, and hate speech are often only clarified through the instrument of treaty interpretations. This book dives beneath the surface of the formal access, procedures, and actors of the UN treaty body system to reveal how the experts and external collaborators play a key role in the development of human rights. Nina Reiners introduces the concept of 'Transnational Lawmaking Coalitions' within a novel theoretical framework and draws on a number of detailed case studies and original data. This study makes a significant contribution to the scholarship on human rights, transnational actors, and international organizations, and contributes to broader debates in international relations and international law.

American engagement with international law has long been framed by commitment to the 'international rule of law', which persists even across divergent political and historical eras. Yet, despite appeals to legal ideals, American international law policy is consistently criticised as fraught with contradiction and distorted by beliefs in 'exceptionalism'. These contested claims of fidelity to law are the subject of this book: what does the 'international rule of law' mean for American legal policymakers even as they advocate competing commitments to international legal order? Answers are found in extensive evidence that American policymakers receive international law through established foreign policy ideologies, which correspond with divisions in both legal scholarship and diplomatic history. Using the case of the International Criminal Court, the book demonstrates that the very meaning of the international rule of law is structured by competing ideological beliefs; between American policymakers and global counterparts, and among American policymakers themselves.