The American Society of International Law (ASIL) has selected a book co-authored by Ryan Goodman, Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz Professor of Law, as the recipient of its annual award for a preeminent contribution to creative scholarship.
Socializing States: Promoting Human Rights Through International Law, written by Goodman and Professor Derek Jinks of the University of Texas School of Law, advocates for increased emphasis on international law’s social influence in the service of improving human rights. The three relevant mechanisms for influencing other states’ behavior, Goodman and Jinks argue, are material inducement; persuasion; and a less commonly cited factor, acculturation. Acculturation, they maintain, employs forces including “mimicry, status maximization, prestige, and identification” that can persuade nations to improve their international law compliance relative to that of their peers.
Jack Goldsmith, former assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel, deemed Socializing States “the most important and consequential book on international law in many years.” Another luminary in the field, Harold Koh, former legal adviser of the US State Department, called the book “the leading scholarly contribution on ‘internalization through socialization,’ bringing insight from sociology, international relations, law, and human rights practice to illuminate the complex social processes that influence national decision making.”
Goodman, a faculty director and co-chair of the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice, is also co-editor-in-chief of Just Security, an online forum for the rigorous analysis of law, rights, and US national security policy. The ASIL, a nonprofit and nonpartisan membership organization more than a century old, fosters the study of international law and promotes the establishment and maintenance of international relations on the basis of law and justice. Last year it gave its award for a preeminent contribution to creative scholarship to University Professor Jeremy Waldron.
Posted on February 7, 2014