Replication Data for: Mingling and Strategic Augmentation of International Legal Obligations

Managing foreign affairs is in no small measure about anticipating the actions (and non-actions) of others, and about taking steps to limit the unexpected -- and the undesired. Law has long been recognized as important to these tasks. Nevertheless, standard IR treatments often overlook important properties of law, even when trying to account for international law’s effects on behavior. Chief among these overlooked properties is the fact that legal rules are formulated for general use, which means their provisions lack determinate meaning in relation to the full range of facts to which they may be applied. Selecting and using legal rules to guide or assess behavior thus requires interpretation. Self-interested actors may differ regarding the applicability, scope, or meaning of individual rules, and still more so where multiple legal rules are in play. In situations where political stakes are high, powerful actors may not be content to leave all interpretative options on the table. Instead they may use interpretative tactics to mingle obligations from different agreements, and, where needed, to augment relevant legal obligations, in efforts to prospectively ensure, in the mode of Riker’s heresthetics, that interlocutors feel compelled by legal circumstances to act in a manner consistent with more powerful actor’s preferences. This article demonstrates how opportunities for agreement mingling and strategic augmentation function in complex legal environments, and also underscores the highly political character of legal processes, with a reexamination of U.S. efforts to insulate U.S. citizens from unwanted exercises of jurisdiction by the International Criminal Court (ICC).