Looming disasters mostly require collective action but international law is traditionally consent based. For a state to be bound by international law, it needs to have ratified a treaty (e.g. concerning climate change) or must be bound by customary international law. This horizontal form of...

Nudges having paternalistic purposes (paternalistic nudges) pose special legal problems in liberal States. Surprisingly, the discussion on regulation-by-nudging has not focused on the constitutional limits to nudging. Although the property rights of firms potentially infringed by nudging...

Traditionally, the enforcement of public international law (PIL) was a task of states: its addressees and its enforcers were states. That has changed recently. Whereas the influence of private market actors on the making of PIL has been extensively analyzed, their influence on its enforcement...

The question of why states comply with international law has long been at the forefront of international law and international relations scholarship. The compliance discussion has largely focused on negative incentives for states to comply. We argue that there is another, undertheorized...

Framing is pervasive in public international law. International legal norms (incl. soft law) and international politics both inevitably frame how international actors perceive a given problem. Although framing has been an object of study for a long time – be it in domestic or international...

The rationalist approach to international law mostly stands on two pillars: the rational choice assumption and, following the traditional international law assumptions in the aftermath of the Westphalian peace, the nation-state has mostly been analyzed as a unitary actor. Rational choice...