A New Book From Edward Elgar Publishing: Negotiating Cultural Rights, Edited by Lucky Belder and Helle Potsdam @ElgarPublishing

New from Edward Elgar Publishing: Negotiating Cultural Rights: Issues at Stake, Challenges and Recommendations (Lucky Belder and Helle Potsdam, eds., 2017).

The various reports on cultural rights by UN Special Rapporteur Faridah Shaheed have provided a new universal standard for topics ranging from cultural diversity, cultural heritage, the right to artistic freedom and the effects of today's intellectual property regimes. This book’s team of international contributors reflects upon the many aspects of cultural rights discussed in Faridah Shaheed’s reports and discusses how cultural rights support cultural diversity, foster intercultural dialogue and contribute to inclusive social, economic and political development. Drawing from a range of disciplines, the contributing authors explore the meaning and position of cultural rights and the implications these may have for international relations, the international legal order and cross-cultural understanding, while also offering recommendations for the future. Key topics discussed include the link between culture and science, gender and human rights, rights to artistic freedom, the importance of historical narratives and the impact of advertising and marketing on the enjoyment of cultural rights. This worthwhile contribution to the current cultural rights debate will be of interest to academics and students teaching and studying in the fields of culture, heritage and human rights as well as policymakers who are working within cultural rights related issues.

Krebs on The Legalization of Truth in International Fact-Finding @ShiriKrebs

Shiri Krebs, Deakin Law School; Stanford Center on International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), is publishing The Legalization of Truth in International Fact-Finding in volume 18 of the Chicago Journal of International Law (2017). Here is the abstract.

Do legal judgments influence people’s attitudes and beliefs concerning contested events? This article builds on studies from three disciplines – law, psychology, and political science – and employs experimental methods to shed light on the impact of legal institutions on their intended audiences. The article identifies a rising ‘legalization of truth’ phenomenon – the adoption of legal discourse to construct and interpret facts outside the courthouse. It argues that legal truth, while providing a framework of legal terminology and conventions to analyze and understand facts, comes with a price tag: it triggers cognitive and emotional biases that frustrate efforts to disseminate controversial information and to resolve factual disputes; and it lacks the emotional appeal, participatory value, and social cues that moral expressions or other types of social truth-telling entail. To demonstrate the legalization of truth process and to measure its impact on attitudes and beliefs, this article focuses on the practice of international fact-finding. In recent years, international fact-finding has become a dominant response to armed conflicts and political violence around the world. Lacking compulsory jurisdiction, international fact-finding bodies have adopted legal discourse, assuming that legal reports uniformly inform the relevant publics with an authoritative account of what happened and motivate domestic sanctioning of in-group offenders. This article challenges both assumptions. Based on two survey-experiments fielded in 2013 and 2014 on representative samples of 1,000 and 2,000 U.S. nationals, respectively, as well as on an original dataset of U.N. fact-finding missions, the study demonstrates that three elements of legal discourse – binary legal judgment, ‘hot’ legal terminology, and legal frame – harm the perceived credibility and persuasive value of fact-finding reports: the legal judgment of the fact-finding report is likely to trigger cognitive biases and belief polarization; ‘hot’ legal terminology is likely to trigger emotional biases and reduce the perceived fairness of the report; and the legal frame appears to be less effective than moral frame in influencing attitudes on accountability.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Wonder Woman Loses Powers As Honorary U.N. Ambassador For Female Empowerment

Wonder Woman has ended her stint as an honorary U.N. ambassador for female empowerment, just two months after she got the job. For some, the red, white, and blue-clad cartoon heroine was a poor substitute for the woman they wished had taken the position as head of the United Nations, a post that went to Antonio Guterres earlier this year. (Here's a link to the original UN press release about WW's appointment).

Ms. Woman, whose alter ego is Diana Prince, created by William Marston, isn't the first fictional character to hold a U.N. post. Others include Red from the Angry Birds, Tinker Bell, and my favorite, Winnie the Pooh.