“Taking on the Technicalities” of International Law – Practice, Description, Critique: A Response to Fleur Johns

Abstract

By laboring underneath the radar of formal law, using a diverse array of conceptual tools and working from material disregarded by mainstream legal scholarship, Fleur Johns' research has consistently opened up novel ways of grappling with international legal problems. The article at the focal point of this symposium continues to push the envelope of international legal studies. It sheds light on how the rise of Big Data and algorithmic decisionmaking is transforming international authority. It also speaks to the increasing deformalization of international law. Examining the mundane practices of global governance may sound unrevealing to some. But Johns shows how this approach can yield important insights into international law's operations and effects.Rather than focusing on the "sensational jurisprudence" of this text, my intervention highlights two important analytical moves that Johns makes: studying international law through its technical practices and deploying a descriptive method to capture and critique its movements. 1 These moves sound straightforward, yet they rarely feature in international legal scholarship. By situating Johns' approach within broader debates unfolding in the social sciences and sociolegal studies, this essay aims to help bridge the theoretical gap. 2 I discuss the key analytical advantages of Johns' approach and also set out some questions and tensions that arose in my reading of the text. In short, this article is refreshing, critical, and generative. It maps how automation is changing international organizations and global governance and provokes us to ask how power might be redistributed in the process. PracticesThe first key move that this article makes is to analyze international law as an effect of material practices. Rather than offering a doctrinal reading of recent changes to nuclear nonproliferation or international refugee law, Johns zooms in on the everyday practices and techniques through which "international institutions and other agents of international law take in or record seemingly unprocessed data about the world and its human and nonhuman inhabitants." 3 Such a practice-based approach remains relatively novel in the domain of international law, where most accounts still privilege positive norms, formal binding powers and "solid authority" models as the cause and effect of legal change. 4 Yet it resonates with recent shifts in social science scholarship aimed at showing how objects, legal forms, relations, and institutions are enacted through practice.

Supply Chain Governance at a Distance

“…Building on recent work, this article contributes to existing literature in international law by examining how an influential multi-industry association is shaping the interpretation of international legal norms (specifically, the norm of human rights due diligence) and the implementation of transnational law (specifically, supply chain due diligence laws with respect to conflict minerals). We draw on a socio-legal approach that focuses on the technical practices of transnational supply chain governance (see, for example, Riles 2005Riles , 2011Johns 2017;Sullivan 2017). Our study of the RMI also contributes to the business and human rights literature by uncovering how emerging regulation on human rights due diligence is failing to achieve its purported goal of enhancing corporate accountability.…”

Translating Modern Slavery into Management Practice

“…I argue that by analyzing supply chain governance as an infrastructure or "network that facilitates the flow of goods, people, or ideas and allow for their exchange over space," we can better understand the "technopolitics" behind supply chain regulations (Larkin 2013, 328). Technopolitics refers to the set of knowledge practices, administrative techniques, and relations of power that underlie governance (Larkin 2013;Johns 2017;Sullivan 2017). I track the implementation of recent supply chain laws by following the "chain of translation," whereby information is transformed from qualitative, unstructured data replete with contestations over the determination of modern slavery on the ground, to quantitative indicators and scorecards of modern slavery risks, and, finally, to companies' statements that summarize efforts to eradicate modern slavery in their supply chains.…”

“…I argue that by doing so we can better understand the "technopolitics" behind recent supply chain regulations and the process through which global supply chain governance is assembled (Larkin 2013, 328). The technopolitics of regulations refers to the set of knowledge practices, administrative techniques, and relations of power that underlie governance (Larkin 2013;Johns 2017;Sullivan 2017). Through an infrastructural approach, I focus on the materiality and political instrumentality of laws by examining the practices, networks, and techniques through which governance unfolds.…”

Implementation in practice: The use of force to protect civilians in United Nations peacekeeping

“…Considering differentiated implementation through practices therefore renders this process analytically approachable and visible. This type of analysis recasts the process of implementation as a site where normative content emerges through practices rather than considering it as technical or apolitical (see Sullivan, 2017). This supports critical scholarship on norms in IR (Krook and True, 2012; Sandholtz, 2008) as we see normative content manifesting and emerging through implementation practices, rather than considering norms (like PoC) as already ‘fixed’ or shared once they have been adopted and institutionalized in UNSC resolutions or other official UN documents.…”