Double Standards and International Law
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Concept note
Double standards are ubiquitous within the study and practice of international law. Examples abound as states speak abstractly about the need for accountability and their commitment to international law but in practice act inconsistently, for example, in applying human rights standards, combatting transnational and international crimes, or making and enforcing the rules that govern trade and development. As wars continue to grip parts of Africa, Europe, and the Middle East, many openly question or seek to remake features of the international system, resurrecting old and raising new challenges for global governance and multilateralism. With the United Nations, World Bank and other multilateral bodies struggling for legitimacy, and globalization increasingly associated with unequal outcomes, authoritarian governments and populist movements around the world have re-asserted their authority inter alia by challenging the legitimacy of the post-Second World War legal order. It is argued increasingly that a Western-dominated rules-based or liberal international order favors some over others, with expressions of double standards framed as hypocrisy, whataboutism, tu quoque arguments, or other variants of inconsistency between rhetoric and practice.
This workshop seeks to foster debate about how double standards are expressed within international law and enhance understanding of how evidence of double standards impacts perceptions and practice. The organizers welcome papers that show the many ways that claims and evidence of double standards manifest in different forms of international legal argument, as well as time- and area-specific considerations of how double standards operate in different fields of international law. In particular, the workshop aims to clarify how accusations of double standards are formulated and perceived in various contexts and from various perspectives, including from the Global South(s), and how evidence of double standards can be analyzed from a cross-disciplinary angle, including through an empirical lens. This workshop aims to bring together scholars and practitioners, from various fields of international law and through divergent theoretical and geographical perspectives, to analyze how double standards manifest through international law and impact international legal practice.
Double Standards and International Law
15-16 July 2024
Freie Universität Berlin; Berlin, Germany
Programme
Day 1: Monday, 15 July
8:00-8:45 –Registration/Coffee
8:45-9:00 – Welcome remarks
9:00-10:30 – PANEL 1: Understanding Double Standards Through a Historical Lens
Moderator: Heike Krieger (Free University Berlin)
· Eric Loeffald (Kent University) – Lineages of the Israel-South Africa Analogy
· Liyu Feng (University of Cambridge) – The UN’s Double Standards and the Legitimization of Third-Party Countermeasures
· Peter Brett (Queen Mary University) – Changing Standards for Evaluating Double Standards (online)
10:30-10:45 – COFFEE
10:45-12:30 – PANEL 2: Assessing the Impact of Double Standards on Human Rights
Moderator: Akbar Rasulov (University of Glasgow)
· Steven Ratner (Michigan Law School) – Human Rights Council, UN Political Bodies and the Challenges of Double Standards
· Pilar Elizalde (University of Oxford) – Inherited Bias? A (Quantitative) Study of Selectivity, Bias, and Double Standards in the Universal Periodic Review
· Matiangai Sirleaf (University of Maryland) – There are Black People in the Past: Reclaiming Our Time in Human Rights
· Frederick Cowell (Birkbeck, University of London) – Double Standards in the Universal Periodic Review Process: Horizontality and Verticality in the Origins of Double Standards
12:30-14:00 – LUNCH
14:00-15:30 – PANEL 3: Hypocrisy and the Inescapability (?) of Double Standards
Moderator: Janina Dill (University of Oxford)
· Ralph Wilde (University College London) - Organized Hypocrisy? Recognition of States and Governments, Human Rights, and Customary International Law
· David Hughes (University of Toronto) – Does International Law Need a Theory of Hypocrisy?
· Margaret McGuinness (St. John’s University) – Hypocrisy and Human Rights Diplomacy
15:30-15:45 – COFFEE
15:45-17:15 – PANEL 4: Technology, Environment and Global Health
Moderator: Liliya Khasanova (Research Group International Rule of Law: Rise or Decline?)
· Ingo Venzke (University of Amsterdam) – The Civilizing, The Developing, the Greening State
· Yibo Li (Antwerp University) – Artificial Intelligence (AI) Content Moderation and Human Rights: A Study of Meta’s Double Standards in Ukraine and Gaza Censorship
· Przemysław Roguski (Jagiellonian University) – Double standards, sui generis cases or progressive development? Applying old rules to new facts in cyberspace
17:15-17:30 – COFFEE
17:30 – 18:30 KEYNOTE: Gary Bass (Princeton University) – Double Standards at the Tokyo Trials
20:00 – DINNER (workshop participants only)
Day 2: Tuesday, 16 July
8:30-9:00 – COFFEE
9:00-10:40 – PANEL 5: Double Standards as a Means of Legal and Diplomatic Argument
Moderator: Malcolm Jorgensen (Max Planck Institute of Comparative Public and International Law)
· Cheah W.L. (National University Singapore) – Double Standards of Diplomatic Compromise (online)
· Dunia Zongwe (University of Namibia) – The Great Fracture: Three Wars, Double Standards, One Antidote
· Eliav Lieblich (Tel Aviv University) – Whataboutism in International Law
· Pedro Esponda (Universidad Iberoamericana) – What International Law? Double Standards on Bindingness and their Role in the Evolution of International Rules
10:40-11:00 – COFFEE
11:00-12:40 – PANEL 6: Conflict, Accountability, and Double Standards
Moderator: Dustin Lewis (Harvard Law School)
· Nina Hart (King’s College London) – Problematizing Hypocrisy: The Case of Export Controls and International Law
· Shiri Krebs (Deakin Law School) – Legal Cynicism and Double Standards in the Application of IHL: The Case of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (online)
· Ka Lok Yip (Hamid Bin Khalifa University) – Comparative Terrorism: A Deflationary Agenda
· Andreas Schüller and Isabelle Hassfurther (European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights) – Double Standards and Selectivity in International Criminal Law
12:40-14:00 – LUNCH
14:00-15:30 – PANEL 7: The Double Standards Debate in Academic Scholarship
Moderator: Hansong Li (Research Group International Rule of Law: Rise or Decline?)
· Otto Spijkers (Leiden University) – Facing Double Standards when Blogging about Difficult Topics in Difficult Times under Difficult Circumstances
· Yulia Ioffe (University College London) – Academic Bias: Exploring Double Standards in the Treatment of Ukrainian Refugees
· Patryk Labuda (Polish Academy of Sciences) – Double Standards in International Legal Scholarship: Beyond US- and Anglo-Centric Culture Wars?
15:30-15:50 – COFFEE
15:50-17:30 – PANEL 8: Double Standards in Global Trade and Labor
Moderator: Andreas Kulick (Eberhard Karls University)
· Olabisi D. Akinkugbe (Dalhousie University) – Double Standards in the Reform of Investor-State Dispute Settlement
· Omar Shehabi (Yale University) – On the Purview of Trade Unions and Capitalists
· Moshe Hirsch (Hebrew University) – Double Standards in the Global Regulation of Digital Trade
· Catherine Weaver (University of Texas) – On Hydras and Hypocrisy: Double Standards in Governance of Global Development
This workshop was co-organized by the Berlin Potsdam Research Group on the International Rule of Law: Rise or Decline? and the Harvard Law School Program on International Law in Armed Conflict.
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