Megan Donaldson - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Megan Donaldson

American Journal of International Law, Jul 1, 2017

This article offers the first detailed history of the norm of treaty publication as it has evolve... more This article offers the first detailed history of the norm of treaty publication as it has evolved over the last century. Drawing on both public debates and archives of foreign ministries, it traces how, and why, secret treaties have persisted, even in liberal democracies. It challenges assumptions of ever-greater transparency over time, and complicates the associations made-by interwar reformers and international lawyers today-between the norm of treaty publication and ideals of legality in the international order. Concern about "secret diplomacy" in the wake of World War I found its clearest expression in opposition to "secret treaties." Left-leaning and internationalist groups believed that "publicity" of treaties 1 would advance the control of foreign policy by legislatures and citizens, and help construct a more peaceful international order, governed by law rather than power politics. Article 18 of the Covenant of the League of Nations gave expression to these ideals, by purporting to render the binding force of treaties entered into by any member of the League conditional on their registration by the League Secretariat. Registration in turn entailed publication to the world at large. 2 Article 18 was thus the first instantiation of a norm of treaty publication in international law (with "treaty" here understood in the general international law sense). 3 Admittedly, this norm was a relatively narrow one. It guaranteed only the

International Journal of Law in Context

This essay takes up the question of what it is to teach international law ‘in context’, drawing o... more This essay takes up the question of what it is to teach international law ‘in context’, drawing on experiences of teaching undergraduate survey courses in the US and UK, and designing a new LLM module on Histories of International Law. The essay begins with an exploration of teaching as a particular context of its own – one with constraints which might also function as foils for creativity. It then sketches some aspects of what teaching international law ‘in context(s)’ might involve, including the ways in which contexts of different kinds put in question one's theory of law, and vice versa. It turns, finally, to an examination of the promise and limits of interdisciplinarity – particularly recourse to history as a discipline – in illuminating contexts.

Transparency in International Law

The Cambridge Companion to International Organizations Law

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2017

This paper explores the work that Guy Fiti Sinclair has undertaken in his book, To Reform the Wor... more This paper explores the work that Guy Fiti Sinclair has undertaken in his book, To Reform the World: International Organizations and the Making of Modern States, and traces the avenues that this work generates for further historical inquiry.

American Journal of International Law, 2017

Chicago Journal of International Law, Jul 1, 2013

Taking globalprescriptionsfor national infrastructure regulation as a case study, this Article ex... more Taking globalprescriptionsfor national infrastructure regulation as a case study, this Article examines the nature and implications of the mingling of law, governance, and economic that is increasingly prevalent in global regulatoy governance. Itfocuses on three sets offormally non-binding but influential instruments issued in the 2000s by the World Bank, the OECD, and UNCITRAL, each of which promotesfar-reaching reforms to existing nationalpublic law and institutions. The Article excavates these instruments' unarticulated theories of the state and its roles, and their visions of the nature andpreferredfeatures of law. It explores the use by these instruments of law-like hierarchies of norms and their deployment of legal concepts within a hybrid vocabulary of law, economics, and polig' disczlines. This may amount merely to ersatz normativity. But this Article posits that, by bringing discourses ofpublic law and regulatoy governance into relation, instruments of this kind could open possibilities for renovation of traditionalpubc law within the state through the opening to an indpientglohal public law. Theproduction and use of these instruments largely escapes the reach of orthodox public and private international law, and of national constitutional or administrative law. Conceivably, global public law could transform the ways in which such prescriptions are developed, and their invocation in particular cases, and might eventually contribute to the reimagination or reinvigoration ofpublic law as a distinct mode of ordering. To assess whether these arepossibilities, we take the infrastructure provisions as a "hard case" against which to analyze two approaches to globalpublic law: "internationalpublic authority" and 'global administrative law." The infrastructure case illustrates signficant limits in the current

The Oxford Handbook of the Theory of International Law, 2016

This chapter attempts to bring ‘global administrative law’ (GAL) and democracy into conversation.... more This chapter attempts to bring ‘global administrative law’ (GAL) and democracy into conversation. It addresses two separate observations: first, that democracy currently lacks the tools to respond to the globalization and diffusion of political authority; and secondly, that GAL is not presently democratic—it has no room for democratic concerns in its emerging norms. As such, the chapter aims to give an overview of GAL and some of its contributions to international legal theory; explore the way in which GAL’s focus on innumerable capillary-level sites of power may open promising terrain for the instantiation of democracy beyond the state; consider how work on GAL can be enhanced by engaging with, and drawing ideas from, work on deliberative democracy; and note the rising impact and future potential of democratic striving in the practice of institutional entrepreneurship and GAL lawyering.

International Law and Peace Settlements, 2021

History, Politics, Law, 2021

AJIL Unbound, 2016

The Sykes–Picot agreement embodies a certain style of diplomacy: an assumption of European predom... more The Sykes–Picot agreement embodies a certain style of diplomacy: an assumption of European predominance, given expression through cartographic line-drawing, terms of art (“protection,” “independence,” “interests”), and a structural secrecy which kept agreements from rival European powers, on the one hand, and from the peoples most affected, on the other. It is this element of secrecy that constitutes the focus of the present contribution. I situate the Sykes–Picot agreement in a prewar pattern of secrecy as diplomatic technique, explore its role in spurring a new regime of publicity for treaties, and take it as a touchstone for exploring whether this new regime could achieve a fundamental transformation of prevailing modes of diplomacy.

Diffusion of regulatory models involving commercialization or privatization, coupled with delegat... more Diffusion of regulatory models involving commercialization or privatization, coupled with delegation of regulation to an independent agency, is supported to some extent by global legal regimes, particularly investment law. Taking the World Bank’s Handbook for Evaluating Infrastructure Regulatory Systems as a case study, the paper suggests that it might function rhetorically to advance the diffusion of a particular view of regulation, and a more concrete set of policies. As well it argues that the ubiquity of a vocabulary of governance, with which global administrative law is closely affiliated, both fosters and limits possibilities for those with different views about desirable regulatory reforms to intervene in policy debates

Infrastructure and Development in Emerging Economies, 2013

Annual Review of Law and Social Science, 2013

Formal transparency policies are increasingly prevalent in global governance institutions, partia... more Formal transparency policies are increasingly prevalent in global governance institutions, partially attenuating the influence in these institutions of practices of secrecy inherited from interstate diplomacy. This article assesses the incidence and specific characteristics of formal transparency policies across a select group of institutions and outlines some of the justifications given for these policies—including justifications based on the publicness of these institutions—and for the more controversial exceptions to transparency, such as the exception for deliberative materials. It examines three drivers affecting the adoption, form, and content of transparency policies and other transparency measures in these institutions: spillover from national transparency laws and policies, growth in the reach and significance of authority exercised in and through global institutions, and criticism of global institutions by influential states and nongovernmental organizations. Twelve hypoth...

SSRN Electronic Journal

In the late nineteenth century, Abyssinia, though nominally recognized as an independent state, r... more In the late nineteenth century, Abyssinia, though nominally recognized as an independent state, remained on the fringes of the international legal order. From 1906, it was the subject of a "Tripartite Agreement" in which Britain, France, and Italy undertook to preserve the integrity of Abyssinia-yet reserved their respective interests should the country collapse. 1 During World War I, Italian, and even some British, officials anticipated bringing Abyssinia under protectorate. 2 This did not eventuate, but American planners took for granted that "Abyssinia has no place in" the future League. Abyssinia, alone of the candidates then under discussion, was self-evidently disbarred. 3 Yet, in 1923, to "prolonged applause," the League Assembly voted unanimously to admit Abyssinia as a member. 4 This admission was perceived by contemporaries as a startling expansion, and flattening, of a Eurocentric, hierarchical "family of nations." Indeed, the British foreign secretary fretted privately that "if Abyssinia is admitted there will be no future ground for excluding anybody." 5 This essay takes Ethiopia as a case study of how the League refracted approaches to statehood and belonging for polities on the margins of the "family of nations." Unlike many other doctrinal or historical treatments, this essay does not focus on a single juridical concept or doctrine. Rather, it traces the flux within and between concepts like sovereignty, statehood, recognition, and admission to the League. It pays particular attention to the way the League as an institution shifted the forums for, and substance of, judicial approaches to statehood and their relation to military force, bureaucratic organization, and political structures. 6 Interwar thinking about statehood-or the relations among people, territory, and political authority more broadly-is admittedly multifaceted. This period was one of profound contestation over the relationship between law and the state. 7 Peace settlements saw the construction of new political and territorial orders, grounded in sometimesconflicting logics of historic right, self-determination on national or ethnic affiliation, and plebiscitary democracy; but inflected too by power politics. 8 Innovations under League auspices, from the crafting of mandates to new arrangements for territorial administration, suggested novel and sometimes divergent avenues in thinking about sovereignty, statehood, and rule. The League put existing tensions-between a world of "powers" ordered hierarchically and a renewed commitment to nominal sovereign equality, and between an abstract notion of the state and the realities of governance in empires-under new pressure. 9 The Ethiopian example brings to light a distinct and important part of this larger