Continuing my focus on international and transnational issues…. Over at Opinio Juris (Link), Roger Alford of Pepperdine Law School (Link) has an interesting post about American exceptionalism. Roger questions whether the U.S. is truly an outlier on human rights treaties, and suggests the need for a more vigorous method of comparativism. He then argues that a proper comparative method may not be feasible because of its inherent complexity. He concludes by saying that “scholars and judges typically opt for narrow, shallow, and simplistic comparisons, and make hollow pronouncements about American exceptionalism.”
I’m not sure I agree with Roger’s broad critique (or condemnation) of comparative analysis. But that’s not the point of this post. I wanted to focus on a related issue – not whether American exceptionalism exists as a descriptive matter (Roger’s question), but whether exceptionalism is something that the U.S. can appropriately use to disregard international norms that the U.S. believes should be binding on others.
For some scholars, American exceptionalism – the idea that the U.S. is sharply different from the rest of the world – means that the U.S. should be unbound by the rules it promotes (e.g., treatment of Guantanamo Bay detainees, extraordinary rendition etc.). American exceptionalism is then a claim not just of difference (perhaps the Tocqueville definition), but a claim of superiority. Often exceptionalism, in this form, is a way to protect constitutional prerogative: a means to shield state rights from incursions from federally created treaty-based norms (think the Bricker Amendment in the mid-1950s). A slew of scholars – commonly referred to as sovereigntist, nationalist or revisionist, and often drawing from neo-realist strands of IR – have published papers in recent years that embrace this view.
This line of argument always surprises me. I am willing to believe that the U.S. is an exceptional country, populated by unique people, who have an exceptional role to play in world affairs. But I’ve never understood why, as a matter of legitimacy, this suggests that the U.S. should move away from international norms that it strongly promotes elsewhere and has helped create (normally in the area of human rights). This is not to naively endorse all international norms. But surely it would be easier to stop promoting the norms, rather than take a double-standard and in so doing risk undermining the legitimacy of those norms. In fact, many forms of American exceptionalism – the idea of strong, individual civil rights and freedoms – were the foundation of the world’s transformation that occurred under the American lead after World War II. One who truly believes in American exceptionalism, might then well turn towards international law as a way to continue to shape it in the U.S. image. American exceptionalism would then be a reason only to resist international norms that the U.S. did not have a hand in creating and are antithetical to American values (not the case with basic human rights). Perhaps more problematic: if the U.S. can use the concept of American exceptionalism to excuse itself from following norms that it seeks to have others follow, what stops other countries from claiming the same “exceptionalist” entitlement when seeking to avoid compliance with the human rights norms that the U.S. holds most dear?
Well there’s my hollow pronouncement for the day….
Posted by Austen Parrish on September 20, 2007 at 06:13 PM