Evasion: Violating International Norms in the Shadow of Legality

• In Event: Compliance and Defiance with International Law

Abstract

Even when human rights norms are codified in relatively strong international treaty law, the violation of these norms persists and sometimes even increases. Conventional solutions to this puzzle share an emphasis on states’ violation of both international law and the human rights norms they are supposed to protect. In this view, norm violations are illegal. This paper reveals that states often violate norms in the shadow of technical legality. Subject to colliding pressures from pro-compliance and pro-violation groups, states create and exploit norm-law gaps (a form of legal loophole) to engage in evasion—the violation of norms in a technically legal fashion. Drawing on diverse evidence—including over 150 semi-structured interviews, 370 court rulings, and the discourse analysis of 1,451 texts—I substantiate the argument in original case studies of France’s expulsion of Roma immigrants (2007-2017) and the Czech Republic’s segregation of Roma in schools for the mentally disabled (1993-2017). France and the Czech Republic violated the international norm of racial equality as they discriminated against the Roma in a technically legal manner. The paper sheds unique light on the politics of compliance at the intersection of legality and normative appropriateness, highlights subtle legal practices through which democracies can undermine human rights, and provides policy-relevant knowledge regarding the limits of promoting human rights through international law.

Author

• Zoltan I. Buzas, Drexel University