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International legalization promises to civilize world politics with global legal norms that bind states' behavior effectively. However, international legal norm can also institutionalize unjust forms of cooperation and the dominance of powerful states. In order to challenge unjust global rules the concept of civil disobedience has to be extended to international law violations by sovereign states. In the national realm civil disobedience has contributed extensively to the establishment of human rights. In order to use the concept for international politics, this paper develops criteria for state civil disobedience which are then applied to the Argentine foreign debt repudiation and Bolivia's violations of international investment law. Furthermore two hypotheses concerning causes and consequences of state civil disobedience are formulated

Many international treaties regulate a variety of policy fields deeply influencing state’s policy options. Moreover, multilateral treaties establishing international organizations and regimes often include provisions how to settle disputes over norm interpretation and treaty application. International dispute settlement mechanisms increasingly install judicial procedures in place of more traditional, diplomatic means. The resulting proliferation of international courts and tribunals has sparked a lively debate about an (emerging) international rule of law. International rule of law would significantly alter the structure of international relations, as law would become an important ordering principle of world politics. However, it is not yet clear whether or how these developments affect actual state behavior. From our point of view, it is entirely an empirical question what effect – and to what extent –judicialized dispute settlement have on states. Presenting results from a comprehensive research project this paper systematically investigates the behavior of OECD member countries in international disputes. We analyze state behavior in over 100 individual disputes in three issue areas of international relations (trade, security and environmental protection) and across time (1970s/1980s compared to the 1990s). Our data demonstrates as a general trend that OECD countries do in fact increasingly use and accept internationally agreed dispute settlement procedures. Nevertheless, important differences across issue areas prevail. While in international trade most disputes are indeed dealt with under the Word Trade Organization’s dispute settlement procedure, in the field of international security many disputes are dealt with outside the relevant procedure of the United Nations Security Council. With regard to environmental protection, the use of the CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species) dispute settlement mechanism falls in between. We observe an overall trend towards judicialization of state behavior, but to different degrees in the different issue areas.

Werden Konflikte über internationales Rechtsnormen heute verstärkt unter Berücksichtigung rechtsstaatlicher Prinzipien ausgetragen? Die Frage, ob eine solche Form der Judizialisierung beobachtet werden kann, wird in der Literatur zumeist dadurch versucht zu beantworten, indem internationale Streitverfahren formal auf ihre Gerichtsförmigkeit hin analysiert werden. Die ebenso wichtige Frage, ob diese Verfahren auch von den Akteuren genutzt werden, wird jedoch bisher nur unzureichend beantwortet. Das vorliegende Papier stellt daher einen analytischen Rahmen vor, mithilfe dessen sowohl internationale Streitverfahren als auch das Verhalten der Akteure auf ihre Judizialisierung hin untersucht werden können.

Werden Konflikte über internationales Rechtsnormen heute verstärkt unter Berücksichtigung rechtsstaatlicher Prinzipien ausgetragen? Die Frage, ob eine solche Form der Judizialisierung beobachtet werden kann, wird in der Literatur zumeist dadurch versucht zu beantworten, indem internationale Streitverfahren formal auf ihre Gerichtsförmigkeit hin analysiert werden. Die ebenso wichtige Frage, ob diese Verfahren auch von den Akteuren genutzt werden, wird jedoch bisher nur unzureichend beantwortet. Das vorliegende Papier stellt daher einen analytischen Rahmen vor, mithilfe dessen sowohl internationale Streitverfahren als auch das Verhalten der Akteure auf ihre Judizialisierung hin untersucht werden können. What is the role of the rule of law in international conflict management? The existing literature mainly tries to answer this question by asking whether the formal judicialization of dispute settlement institutions increases over time. The equally important question whether state actors actually use these institutions remains largely unanswered. Thus this paper presents an analytical frame that helps to assess the judicialization of both institutions and actors.