The Commons | Faculty Focus whose chapter titled “Treaty Exit and Intrabranch Conflict at the Interface of International and Domestic Law” brings in insights from regions such as Latin America, where courts have, on occasion, mandated a country’s treaty withdrawal. Helfer, who co-directs CICL and serves as AJIL co-editor-in-chief with Bradley, was deeply involved with the project from the beginning. “He was at every conference and helped advise me throughout,” Bradley said. “He’s been a great collaborator.” Helfer, an expert in the areas of international law and institutions, international adjudication and dispute settlement, human rights, and international intellectual property law and policy, praised Bradley’s stewardship of the project and said that he emerged with an enriched understanding of a familiar topic. “Although I have extensively studied the international law of treaty withdrawal, I never considered the foreign relations dimensions of the topic, in particular which branches of government decide whether and how states exit from international agreements.” Two launch events that were attended by contributors and other interested scholars followed The Oxford Handbook’s spring publication: one in London on June 28 at the Center for Transnational Legal Studies; and a panel discussion on July 2 at the Duke-Leiden Institute in Global and Transnational Law, where Bradley taught a course on comparative foreign relations law with Joris Larik of Leiden University, an expert on the external relations of the European Union and a contributor to the project. “It isn’t just a book,” Larik said at the event. “It’s really something quite new, something that defines a new field of study that wasn’t there before.” Panelist David Stewart, a professor at the Georgetown Law Center whose chapter on international immunity was informed by his long career in the U.S. Department of State, said that a comparative approach is crucial for effective diplomacy. “If you want to negotiate and come to agreement with other countries, you need to try to put yourself in the other person’s shoes — to understand their system, why they are approaching something the way they do. If you want to achieve an agreement, say a multilateral agreement, it really is important to understand what the approaches are of various governments around the world, why nations want to do something a certain way.” As he wrote in the preface and reiterated at the launch events, Bradley sees the book as only the initial foundation for a new field of teaching and scholarship. “We view this as the very first stage of the development of this area of study, not the final stage by any means, and not the last word,” he said in The Hague. “I am actually quite interested in seeing how this develops. There’s a lot we don’t yet know about the foreign relations laws of many countries and certain regions, particularly in a deep sense.” He also hopes to see the development of new approaches to empirical work in the field. But he is satisfied that his initial mission has been accomplished, and others agree. “This is the book on which comparative foreign relations scholars will build their future work,” wrote Ashley Deeks, E. James Kelly, Jr. – Class of 1965 Research Professor of Law at the University of Virginia. d — Frances Presma
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Duke Law Magazine • Fall 2019
Measuring social welfare
Adler proposes framework for policy evaluation that factors individual well-being
“H
ow should we evaluate proposed governmental policies?” Matthew Adler asks at the start of his new book, Measuring Social Welfare: An Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2019). “What methodology should we use to assess whether one policy is better or worse than a second, or than the status quo?” For nearly 40 years, every regulation of the U.S. government originating in the executive branch has been evaluated using the same standard: cost-benefit analysis. A 1981 executive order signed by President Ronald Reagan requires it. But Adler, whose interdisciplinary research focuses on improving frameworks for policy analysis — and who draws from welfare economics, normative ethics, and legal theory — has long advocated for a different methodology. His framework, known as the social welfare function, significantly improves on cost-benefit analysis by factoring individual well-being into policy evaluation and addressing questions of societal inequity. In his new book, Adler offers the theoretical underpinnings of two social welfare function measures. The first, utilitarianism, originated with the 18th century philosopher and social reformer Jeremy Bentham, and advocates policy choices that would satisfy the preferences of the greatest number of people. The second, “prioritarianism,” is a refinement to utilitarianism that gives extra
