This conclusion is but a new beginning. I start off engaging with the contributors’ friendly arguments and criticisms, many of which I adopt for future research. Looking forward, I demonstrate the practical potential of a world ordering research program, arguing that tackling world order’s urgent global vulnerability threats, such as climate change and Artificial Intelligence (AI) cannot wait for dependable global governance, let alone world government. Instead, I suggest cognitive-evolution politics. The latter involves, first, grasping that world order vulnerability results from the performance of simultaneous and synergetic local, national, and international, harmful practices. Second, cognitive evolution politics requires mutual trust and adopting global cooperation by necessity, which, in turn, calls for embedding global problems and solutions in national interests. Cognitive evolution politics may promote “embedded globalism” by (a) learning, contestation, experimentation, and negotiation within and across communities of practice; (b) power, understood as a decentralized and relational field of forces distributed across communities of practice’s multiple--state, corporate, scientific, and public opinion--stakeholders, and (c) practical democracy, consisting of democratic practices that sustain common humanity values while promoting national interests. I briefly illustrate my claims focusing on AI and communities of practice’s efforts to mitigate its harmful global consequences.

Proper testing of evidence, including witness testimony, is key to ensuring due process and procedural fairness, and affirms the legitimacy of systems of international dispute settlement resolution. In this regard, commentators have emphasised that, in international dispute settlement, less weight should be given to witness testimony that has not ‘undergone the interrogation of the court and the cross-examination by the opposing party’. The WTO dispute settlement system sees some of the most active and complex litigation across international tribunals. Yet, the WTO’s standard procedural rules provide no opportunity for the adjudicator or parties to (1) request the appearance of a witness, or (2) pose live questions to the witness. Consequently, most WTO disputes do not involve any in-person testing of witnesses. In this context, this chapter sets out to suggest an approach to fill the gap in the WTO rules on in-person witness testing.

Focusing on the historical and contemporary dilemmas posed by the “refugee crisis,” this essay investigates the potential for international progress in acknowledging our common humanity. I examine the utility of Emanuel Adler’s theory of cognitive evolution as a lens through which to assess the extent of that potential. I employ the theory to explore how certain practices dealing with forced migration became prevalent, while others lay dormant. I also examine how competing communities of practice battle to shape our understanding of forced migration in the current “post-truth” environment. I argue that cognitive evolution offers a potent conceptual framework for understanding both the extent to which the suffering of migrants has and has not been alleviated – a powerful indicator of the degree to which the world community has acknowledge their humanity. This holds for the social order of refugee protection, even in the current period as tribalism threatens to erode epistemological security, as normlessness threatens to replace a competition among norms, and as these threats weaken our shared reality.

This chapter uses Adler’s analysis of power to unpack his political and explanatory theory by making two claims. First, Adler’s understanding of power accentuates the agentic components of power – and hence order – and downgrades the role of domination in social order. Whereas his ontology would allow for a wider conception, his communitarian political theory does not. Second, in his explanatory theory, power (as ‘epistemic practical authority’) becomes a central cause for understanding the evolution of social orders. Yet, assuming evolution to be constituted by contingent and contextual processes that remain indeterminate, epistemic practical authority cannot carry this causal weight.

This chapter argues that one of the main lacunae of Emanuel Adler’s cognitive evolution framework is its lack of engagement with discourse as participating in meaning-making processes. It starts with a demonstration of what is arguably the most important contribution of the cognitive evolution framework: a becoming ontology. It then explores how adding narratives as a discursive process of becoming could strengthen this ontology. Cognitive evolution and narratives are complementary because they both rest on a becoming framework, so adding the latter has the potential to strengthen Adler’s theory, as well as its usefulness to guide empirical research. It uses the case of the World Bank and participatory development practices to demonstrate the importance of narrative in cognitive evolution and collective learning processes.

International courts and tribunals are increasingly faced with a number of technical, extralegal issues in disputes before them, often entire disputes hinging on technical questions. Consequently, the international dispute settlement system is witnessing a gradual alteration from a procedural viewpoint. As a tool to assist the adjudicator in decision-making, the ‘expert’ has entered the international judicial process, playing varying roles in various disputes. This chapter looks at disputes where both parties are states. The first section compares the criteria and method of selection of experts by the adjudicator in various fora; this is followed by a study of procedures involving an ex curia expert, and a comparative analysis of procedures involving party-appointed experts. The chapter concludes with a brief overview of the possibilities for further lessons from a broader comparative review.

The paper enriches New Materialism with a macro-historical theorization of changes of international order. It finds inspiration in Emanuel Adler’s cognitive evolution, and complements this theoretical framework with a New Materialist dimension. Following cognitive evolution international orders change when the configuration of international practices, their background knowledge and the practitioners change. The two steps that are crucial for these changes are creative variation and selective retention. Technologies and artefacts play a key role in the variation and retention of international practices. New Materialist mechanisms of creative variation focus on forbidden fruit blending (the combination of material objects from realms that do not typically belong together to create a new device), on the intertwinements between new ideas and new technologies and artefacts, and on the entanglements between new practices and new artefacts and technologies. In terms of selective, retention I argue that functionality and aesthetics can operate as material criteria for selective retention, and I highlight the relevance of network memory for the kinds of information that are stored and how they can be stored, thus retained. The paper illustrates the usefulness of a New Materialist version of cognitive evolution on the evolution of the internet as a specific international order.

The general assessment of the problem of the use of previous decisions in international adjudication usually starts from the many statements to the effect that ‘there is no rule of precedent in international law’. Reliance is mainly placed on specific statutory rules, starting from Article 38(1)(d) of the Statute of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which is understood to authoritatively reflect the sources of international law and states that the Court ‘shall apply ... judicial decisions’ as ‘subsidiary means for the determination of rules of law’ subject to the operation of Article 59, which appears to rule out any endorsement of a rigid rule (or practice) of stare decisis. These approaches have a common thread: they address the question of the use and authority of previous decisions in international adjudication as one regulated by rules. Yet, they are never found to provide a satisfactory answer to the problem. This chapter offers an alternative to the traditional outlook, challenging the oft-repeated truism that ‘there is no rule of precedent in international adjudication’ by arguing that it is desirable to shift the analysis from an almost mythological rule of precedent – or an equally esoteric belief in a lack thereof – to more tangible rules on precedent. These may – and do – include rules in which a specific understanding of the question is endorsed by the statutory provisions of a specific international adjudicator, but is not exhausted by them, as other rules of different nature and origin (including, but not limited to, organisational directives, rules on submissions, on evidence and on law ascertainment, as well as those concerning systems of challenge, appeal and control) also have an impact – with varying degrees of directness – on the role, possible uses and authority of the past. This study is based on the identification of such rules and their treatment. Its overall purpose is to show how, in the absence of one rule of precedent, the many rules on precedent can contribute to shape the use of the past by international adjudicators, and their mindset in doing so. The approach taken is based on the examination of existing or purported rules, and thus is both rule-based and aimed at rule synthesis. It is not, however, merely descriptive: rather, it also considers implications which could be found useful in the creation of new adjudication mechanisms, and provides insights on potential avenues of reform.

The cost of international dispute settlement is inseparable from the question of access to justice. Cost-saving measures have taken on systemic importance to parties and institutions in international dispute settlement across a range of party dynamics, and have surfaced through an especially wide range of means in state-to-state proceedings. The present study identifies three broad pathways toward cost-efficiency in state-to-state adjudication and arbitration, before assessing potential improvements to promote efficiency and assist developing states in commencing, or defending against, claims in the international arena. In particular, the author outlines six key possibilities for reforming the practices of the Trust Fund of the International Court of Justice, which would potentially influence the efficiency and utilisation of other institutional funds addressed in this chapter. Such developments may benefit not only states requesting financial assistance, but also the institution and the context in which the international community views its vital work.

In international law, the traditional postulate of the jurisdictional function is that it covers only the adjudicative phase; the post-adjudicative phase belonging to the realm of politics. This chapter rejects this premise and attempts to deconstruct it in the light of the purpose of jurisdictional remedy. It follows that recourse to jurisdictional mechanisms is intended to bring disputes to a definitive end. This chapter then draws the consequences for the jurisdictional function.

Transparency is central in current policy debates about international law. One sees it being waved as a flag or wielded as a sword in debates on the legitimacy of international institutions and their role in global governance. Its proponents talk about ‘sunlight being the best disinfectant’, while its opponents see it as changing modern diplomacy. Due to their crucial role in gatekeeping international commitments, these debates have also touched on the issue of transparency in international adjudicating bodies. This has led to fruitful legal and normative analysis of the state of the art of transparency in international courts. This chapter attempts to contribute to these debates by assessing three understudied aspects of transparency in the international adjudication debate. Firstly, adding to the previous literature, this chapter attempts to make a different, though cumulative, case for why transparency in international adjudication matters. It does so by showing how most theories of compliance with international law as well as theories of compliance with international legal rulings are very much information-dependent. If one takes the step of accepting that more transparency leads to more information, then whether or not a dispute is open to the general public becomes relevant for reasons beyond its normative value. It also becomes a question of compliance. Secondly, in line with previous literature on the topic, this chapter provides a theoretically informed survey of the design of procedural rules associated with transparency at the main global adjudicating bodies. Specifically, it does so by assessing design features, which are expected to impact transparency outcomes: whether the rule is mandatory or a default-rule, status quo option; agenda-setters and the scope for possible shifts from the status quo; and the number of veto-players. Finally, the chapter goes beyond the rules of international adjudicating bodies and assesses transparency outcomes in 1,248 disputes at eight major adjudicating bodies across several issue areas. Using online disclosures by international adjudicating bodies as an empirical case study, this chapter provides a novel and comprehensive map of de facto transparency in international disputes. By doing so, it shows that rule-based assessments of how transparent an international adjudicating body is may be misleading.

How do actors construct complexity? This chapter looks at the ways and extent of influence by epistemic communities and communities of practice in shaping the global agenda on environmental governance, in the shadow of concerns about complexity. Employing Emanuel Adler’s new theoretical framework it argues that environmental governance has emerged through a process of cognitive evolution heavily shaped by epistemic communities.

This chapter analyses India’s challenges to jurisdiction before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) in 2014 and 2015, comparing the implications of the bodies’ differing procedures and perceptions of their own jurisdiction, and assessing the international relations dynamics at hand. In the Nuclear Zero and Enrica Lexie cases, high-profile matters of lethal weight were repeatedly held hostage by conflicting understandings of jurisdiction. India’s relationship with international jurisdiction, and especially its respective success and failure challenging ICJ and ITLOS jurisdiction, demonstrate how ITLOS procedure is designed to (and successfully does) cabin jurisdictional challenges in interstate disputes. After exploring the courts’ jurisdictional procedure in design and experience, this chapter offers reflections on the impact of the procedural variances, and future implications for states’ behaviour challenging jurisdiction – both for rising powers, who may wish to follow India’s example exerting status in nuanced embrace of international jurisdiction, and for major powers such as the United States, which in time may have to engage international courts if it cannot neutralise the decline of the status which allows it to broadly reject ICJ jurisdiction in state-to-state disputes.