Dr Jason Ralph's Publications
Books
(2012) Law, War and the State of the American Exception Oxford University Press
(2007) Defending the Society of States: Why America Opposes the International Criminal Court and Its Vision of World Society pp. 254p Oxford University Press
The literature on the International Criminal Court (ICC) has been dominated by legal texts. This is the first single authored book length project to address the issues raised by the ICC from an International Relations perspective. It addresses this shortcoming of the IR literature with an in-depth empirical analysis of the Court and American opposition to it. The book also explicitly addresses significant theoretical questions in the study of international society, which have been given a high profile in the International Relations community thanks mainly to the reconvening of “the English School” by Barry Buzan and Richard Little. The book develops the English School research agenda by using its theoretical framework to analyse recent developments in the field of international criminal justice. It offers a concise definition of ‘world society’, which helps to resolve a longstanding problem of English School theory. America’s opposition to the ICC has exposed key characteristics of America’s political identity. The book discusses these at length and thus makes an important contribution to the contemporary debate on the nature of American power. Finally, the war on terrorism has had a major impact on the US approach to international law and international humanitarian law. Making use of the documentary evidence released after the Abu Ghraib scandal, the book examines how these policy debates, the subsequent scandal and the 2004 Supreme Court decision influences the future debate on the ICC.
(2001) Beyond the security dilemma: ending America's cold war pp. ix, 213p Ashgate
Chapters
(2011) The International Criminal Court and the State of the American exception In: Crawford A (eds.) International and Comparative Criminal Justice and Urban Governance Cambridge Univ Pr
by the ICC with any crime, ...
(2011) George F. Kennan. American Diplomacy In: Volumes of Influence Manchester University Press
(2011) A difficult relationship. Britain's doctrine of international community and America's war on terror In: Gaskarth J (eds.) British Foreign Policy: The New Labour Years' Palgrave
(2009) To usher in a new paradigm? The Bush administration's foreign policy legacy. In: Wroe A; Herbert J (eds.) Assessing the George W. Bush Presidency: A Tale of Two Terms Edinburgh University Press
(2009) ‘Anarchy is what criminal lawyers (and other actors) make of it. International criminal justice and the social construction of world society In: Roach S (eds.) Governance, Order, and the International Criminal Court Oxford University Press
(2008) Republic, Empire or Good International Citizen? International Law and American Identity In: Christie K (eds.) US National Identity in the 21st Century pp. 85 - 100 Routledge
Because it has traditionally codified the independence of distinct legal and political communities, international law has played a central role in the social processes that construct statehood. In fact the early American Republic embraced what was then referred to as the law of nations as a means of consolidating the sovereignty of its people and securing its place among an international society of sovereign states. However, as international society has evolved to include all human beings as rights bearing citizens and as it considers delegating judicial authority to supranational courts in order to protect those rights, the match between republican and internationalist principles has come under threat. Indeed the argument that the US must oppose certain developments in international law in order to protect its founding principles is now heard with increasing frequency. This chapter explores this tension and what it means for American identity by mapping the debate on the application of international human rights and humanitarian law in American and international courts. It does this with specific reference to the debates on the Alien Tort Statute, the International Criminal Court and Guantanamo Bay. Its central argument is that those who oppose the direct application of international human rights and humanitarian law in American courts are obviously motivated by a need to defend the republic against unaccountable judges applying a law that has not gained the consent of the American people. Likewise, those who oppose the International Criminal Court are motivated by a concern that the Court’s independent prosecutor is unaccountable and therefore a threat to the values that underpin the American republic. The paper concludes, however, by arguing that as long as this discourse allows the US government to use its power overseas without check, balance or redress, then that discourse risks becoming part of a process that helps to defend Empire rather than one that helps to advance Liberty.
(2000) Persistent Dilemmas: US National Security Policy in the Post-Cold War Era In: Jones CA; Kennedy-Pipe C (eds.) International Security in a Global Age: Security in the 21st Century pp. 28 - 56 Frank Cass
(2000) 'High Stakes' and 'Low-Intensity Democracy': Understanding America's Policy of Promoting Democracy In: Cox M; Ikenberry GJ; Inoguchi T (eds.) American Democracy Promotion: Impulses, Srategies and Impacts pp. 200 - 217 Oxford University Press
Journal Articles
(2009) Which Cosmopolitanism? Whose Empire? Or Why the Schmittian Charge of "Liberal Imperialism" is Only half Right In: Global Society 23 (3) pp. 207 - 224
(2006) America's War on Terrorism. Making Sense of the "Troubling Confusion" In: The International Journal of Human Rights 10 (2) pp. 234 - 256 London : Frank Cass & Co. Ltd
This review article summarises and analyses several books in the area of US foreign policy, international law and human rights. It assesses the contribution made by these books and offers an original perspective on the US decision to declare 'war' on terrorism rather than approach the issue from the perspective of international criminal law.
(2003) Between Cosmopolitan and American Democracy: Understanding US Opposition to the International Criminal Court In: International Relations 17 (2) pp. 195 - 211
The ICC can be seen as a cosmopolitan response to the problems of global democracy. This article demonstrates how opponents of the Court use a concern for international order to disguise a policy motivated by a narrow conception of the national interest. US opposition reveals the extent to which it fears being held accountable for the way America uses the great power veto on the UN Security Council. America’s opposition to the Court has also succeeded in bringing to the surface the extent to which American foreign policy is driven by communitarian conceptions of democracy and international society. Despite promising to hold power accountable for egregious human rights violations the Court is considered a threat to American sovereignty and dismissed as undemocratic. The article argues that this communitarian understanding of democracy promotion will be increasingly problematic as the processes of globalisation undermine the capacity of states to guarantee human rights.
(2011) After Chilcot. The doctrine of international community and the UK decision to invade Iraq In: British Journal of Politics and International Relations
This article draws on the publicly available oral and documentary evidence produced by the Iraq Inquiry to interrogate the policy impact of the ‘doctrine of international community’, which Tony Blair first articulated during the 1999 Kosovo campaign. Guided by that doctrine, the UK's objective was to reconcile US policy and the UN Security Council. There were two ways to do this: to convince the Bush administration that disarming Iraq was enough and that regime change was a step too far; or to convince the Security Council that disarmament was insufficient and that regime change was necessary. Unfortunately both these strategies failed to deliver the UK objective. To go to war under these circumstances revealed a flaw in the original doctrine, which was to assume that individual states could speak for international society even when they were opposed by a majority of states on the UN Security Council.
(2011) Introduction: Democracy Promotion and Human Rights in US Foreign Policy In: International Journal of Human Rights (special issue ed. by Jason Ralph and Oz Hassan) 15
(2010) War as an institution of international hierarchy. Carl Schmitt's Theory of the Partisan and Contemporary American Practice In: Millennium 39 (2)
(2009) The Laws of War and the State of the American Exception In: Review of International Studies pp. 631 - 649
The article examines the US response to the 9-11 terrorist attacks using the Carl Schmitt’s concept of the exception. It argues that the Bush administration's response is consistent with Schmitt’s view that US policy replicates the historical practice of drawing lines that separate ‘civilisation’ from zones of exception where the normal laws governing warfare do not apply. This suggests that the state of exception declared after 9-11 is not contingent on the rise and fall of the terrorist threat, rather it is the latest manifestation of ‘global linear thinking’ and therefore a permanent feature of American hegemony. However, the article does not accept this pessimistic conclusion. US policy since 9-11 fits squarely with a Schmittian explanation only because conservative nationalists have used the war on terror to help reconstruct a sense of American 'exceptionalism'. An alternative reading of how American liberalism should respond to terrorism can be found in the manner in which the administration’s policy has been rejected by the US Supreme Court.
(2005) International society, the International Criminal Court and American foreign policy In: Review of International Studies 31 (1) pp. 27 - 44 Cambridge University Press
(2004) The International Criminal Court and the Uneasy Revolution in International Society In: The International Journal of Human Rights 8 (2) pp. 235 - 247 London : Frank Cass & Co. Ltd
(2001) American Democracy and Democracy Promotion In: International Affairs 77 (1) pp. pp.129–140 Blackwell Publishers Ltd.
(1999) Security Dilemmas and the end of the Cold War In: Review of International Studies 25 pp. 721 - 725 British International Studies Association
(1998) Review Article: Realising Realism's Role in US Policy Towards Europe In: European Security 7 (4) pp. 172 - 186 Frank Cass
Others
(2005) Tony Blair's 'new doctrine of international community' and the UK decision to invade Iraq pp. 1 - 31 POLIS
Contact Details
- Tel: 0113 343 4429
- Fax:0113 343 4400
- Email: j.g.ralph@leeds.ac.uk