The 2007–2008 Board of Editors is pleased to present a symposium titled Public International Law and Economics. After a short introduction, the symposium features eight articles by American scholars from a December 2006 conference in Bonn, Germany and seeks to capture the trans-Atlantic dynamic so central to the conference by also including comments from top European scholars. Each of the pieces published in the symposium is available in PDF format by following the links below.
The symposium begins with Kenneth W. Abbott’s Enriching Rational Choice Institutionalism for the Study of International Law. Professor Abbott expands the analysis of rational choice methodology of Institutionalism to international law by formalizing the inclusion of nonstate actors. Comments by Anne van Aaken and Stefan Oeter follow.
In Nonconsensual International Lawmaking, Laurence R. Helfer considers the practice of treaty enforcement against states without their formal consent. Documenting the rise of such nonconsensual enforcement in a variety of multinational initiatives, Professor Helfer analyzes the potential consequences of nonconsensual lawmaking in treaty design, participation, and adherence.
In Measuring the Shadow of the Future: An Introduction to the Game Theory of Customary International Law, George Norman and Joel Trachtman apply game theoretics to demonstrate how the “shadow of the future” treaty-compliance principal can be used to increase the likelihood of compliance, thus providing a rational choice model of the relevant facts and parameters in a state’s compliance decisions.
In Treaties: Strategic Considerations, economist Todd Sandler uses game theoretics to explain the interrelation of treaty design and adherence. Asserting that states only ratify a treaty when anticipating positive net transaction benefits, the article concludes that factors increasing the likelihood of adherence others will induce a given state to ratify. Comments by Simon J. Evenett and Katharina Holzinger follow.
In Commitment and Diffusion: How and Why National Constitutions Incorporate International Law, Tom Ginsburg, Svitlana Chernykh, and Zachary Elkins consider the phenomenon of the incorporation of international law in domestic constitutions. The authors conclude that many new democracies constitutionalize international law to enhance the credibility of domestic commitments. Comments by Anne Peters and Andreas Zimmermann follow.
In Competing for Capital: The Diffusion of Bilateral Investment Treaties, 1960–2000, Zachary Elkins, Andrew T. Guzman, and Beth Simmons reprise their previously published explanation of the spread of BITs by testing their original conclusions against the most recently available data from 2000–2006. A comment by Christoph Engel follows.
In The Case Against Reforming the WTO Enforcement Mechanism, Jide Nzelibe refutes two leading proposals for altering WTO enforcement. He argues that both “incentive-compatible” and “user-friendly” enforcement reforms threaten to introduce dangers of its own which outweigh the problems of the present enforcement mechanism. Comments by Ernst-Ulrich Petersmann and Christian Tietje follow.
Finally, in The Inefficiency of Universal Jurisdiction, Eugene Kontorovich applies the economic analysis of standing rules to the doctrine of universal jurisdiction to demonstrate the doctrine's inefficiency. The symposium concludes with summary pieces from Christian Kirchner and Georg Nolte.
The Board of Editors is also pleased to present student notes by Robert A. Britton and Joshua H. Whitman. Josh Whitman’s note was the winner of the 2006–2007 University of Illinois Law Review Best Note Award.
| 
