25th Annual Grotius Lecture on International Law

Lecturer: Dr. Kim Lane Scheppele, Princeton School of Public and International Affairs: "Restoring Democracy through International Law"

Distinguished Discussant: Justice Manuel José Cepeda Espinosa, High Level Panel of Legal Experts on Media Freedom: "Kim Scheppele’s vision for restoring democracy - and why we must accept the challenge"

Abstract:

The “emerging right to democratic governance” (as Tom Franck famously called it in 1992) has preoccupied international law debates for decades. But what is the status of this right in an age of democratic recession when state practice increasingly rejects democratic ideals? In this lecture, Scheppele looks at the challenges to democratic governance posed by a new generation of autocrats who mimic democracy in order to undermine it and who avoid obvious violations of international law while doing so. Because the new autocrats consolidate power in fewer and fewer hands and eliminate checks and balances in their domestic constitutional orders without engaging in massive human rights violations and without eliminating multiparty elections, they operate in a legal domain that international law has been reluctant to enter.

How can international law rise to this new challenge of defending democracy in an era of democratic recession? Scheppele argues that international law standards for assessing domestic constitutional institutions are just starting to emerge now, particularly with regard to judicial independence, executive term limits and the operation of independent “fourth branch” institutions. While this new “international law of constitutional democracy” is not yet generally binding on most states and is still tentative in character, its emerging principles can be used by principled democrats inside the new autocracies to guide transitions back to democracy.