States write incomplete contracts when negotiating and concluding international treaties. Often, they delegate the interpretation of treaties to third-party adjudicators. Some treaties, especially in environmental law, do not institutionalize adjudication within the treaty regime but leave the...

This paper investigates how different outcomes of criminal appeals impact crime deterrence. My panel data analysis (1997-2013) indicates that crime rates decrease when convictions are affirmed by the appellate court, as long as conviction rates are not too high. Crime rates are further found to...

It is hypothesized that prosecution agencies that are dependent on the executive have less incentives to prosecute crimes committed by government members that in turn increases their incentives to commit such crimes. Here, this hypothesis is put to an empirical test focusing on a particular kind...

Empirical research shows that international human rights law is to a large extent ineffective. Individual complaint mechanisms are the only significantly effective enforcement mechanism. Certainly many variables influence the success of enforcement through judicial or quasi-judicial mechanisms...