Doctoral Dissertation Research: Assessing the Conditions Under Which Nations Implement International Anti-Atrocity Laws

大量的研究机构都在研究为什么国家会制定和批准国际法律协议。然而，相对较少的研究评估了各国可能进一步将国际法律规则纳入其国内法的条件。这项研究有助于我们理解为什么以及何时国家将国际协议纳入其法律体系，通过审查刑事禁止种族灭绝，战争罪，危害人类罪和酷刑。这些规范主要通过国内法院发挥作用，因此为了履行其职能，各州必须通过刑法，界定并允许其法院起诉这些罪行。这项研究将产生一个新的、公开的关于二战以来反暴行法在世界范围内传播的数据集。通过对通过这些法律的模式的分析，这项研究将使人们对促进执行国际法的更一般的机制有新的认识。具体来说，本研究假设各州可能在大规模的刑法改革过程中实施反暴行法，因为这种改革使法律专家能够识别和编纂他们认为体现现代刑法应该是什么样子的法律——比如反暴行法。为了检验这一论点与从人权和规范扩散的文献中得出的各种替代方案，本研究使用了一个原始和全面的数据集的时间序列统计分析，该数据集是关于1945年以来反对种族灭绝、战争罪、危害人类罪和酷刑的国家刑法的传播。为了验证和进一步探讨统计结果背后的因果机制，本研究调查了一个对现有理论特别令人困惑的案例，即危地马拉在1973年通过这些法律。

Large bodies of research examine why states construct and ratify international legal agreements. Yet relatively little research assesses the conditions under which states are likely to go further and incorporate international legal rules into their domestic laws. This study contributes to our understanding of why and when states incorporate international accords into their legal systems through examination of criminal prohibitions against genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and torture. These norms are designed to work primarily through domestic courts, so in order to fulfill their function, states must pass criminal laws that define and allow their courts to prosecute these offenses. This research will produce a new, publicly available dataset on the worldwide spread of anti-atrocity laws since World War II. Through analysis of the patterns by which these laws have been adopted, this research will shed new light on more general mechanisms that facilitate the implementation of international law.Specifically, this study hypothesizes that states are likely to implement anti-atrocity laws during large-scale processes of criminal code reform, because such reforms empower legal experts to identify and codify laws - like anti-atrocity laws - that they believe embody how a modern criminal code should look. To test this argument against a variety of alternatives drawn from the literatures on human rights and norm diffusion, this study uses time-series statistical analyses of an original and comprehensive dataset on the spread of national criminal laws against genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and torture since 1945. To verify and further probe the causal mechanisms underlying the statistical results, this study investigates a single case that is particularly puzzling for existing theories, that is Guatemala's adoption of these laws in 1973.