This chapter surveys several entry points through which science becomes legally relevant in WTO law and in trade disputes. It reviews the elaborate techniques of WTO panels and the Appellate Body to engage with scientific evidence in cases involving environmental and health risks. The chapter addresses the WTO’s expert consultation system and discusses the changing canons of deference afforded to WTO members in adopting science-based SPS measures. It extensively analyses the epistemic nature and significance of the two-stage standard of review, under which WTO dispute settlement bodies scrutinize the coherence of the reasoning provided by the risk assessor. The chapter concludes with identifying argumentative techniques in the WTO jurisprudence justifying adjudicatory conclusions concerning scientific evidence and arguments. It distinguishes reasoning methods built on scientific, intuitive, and legal rationality. The chapter also identifies an additional particular reasoning style, which utilizes concepts that are labelled as 'hybrid' benchmarks.

This chapter provides an overview of the international relations of historical East Asia. We begin with the Qin–Han unification of what is now central China (221 BC – 220 AD), extending into the era of contact with the West, stopping around 1900 when the system had clearly disintegrated, and Western imperialism and the rise of Japan had created entirely new dynamics. Our purposes are multiple. The first is to provide a stylized periodization and chronology of crucial events – what might be thought of as key markers – and how they reshaped the regional order. However, our second is to amplify on a number of the theoretical themes raised in the Introduction, placing them in appropriate historical context. New scholarship is overturning many of the most hoary stereotypes, starting with the presumption that the history of East Asian international relations is simply the history of China and its dynastic changes. Rather, we have to think of the history of a vast, vibrant, and diverse region encompassing a variety of political forms on China’s peripheries, from well-established kingdoms and social orders, to frontiers of settled farmers, as well as nomadic peoples.

This chapter argues that downplaying science in the judicial inquiry has a fundamental impact on the ways in which legitimate and persuasive reasoning can be crafted. More particularly, not respecting the cognitive authority of science undermines the epistemic legitimacy of decisions. The central yardstick in this respect is not that using more science would necessarily result in better-reasoned judgments; rather, the legitimacy of judgments hinges on how adjudicators reflect on the scientific aspects of disputes in the reasoning. The chapter identifies four types of epistemic yardsticks with which international fora justify the acceptance or rejection of a particular science-based claim. The chapter differentiates between legal, scientific, hybrid, and intuitive reasoning styles, and discusses the benefits and trade-offs of each of them in terms of factual accuracy, epistemic non-arbitrariness, practical feasibility, and preserving the judicial monopoly over adjudication. The chapter also offers solutions for remedying applicable shortcomings, and offers recommendations for selecting a sound approach to scientific knowledge in the judicial reasoning under particular circumstances.

Drawing on arguments found in international relations theory, this chapter explores Philippine nationalist resistance against imperial occupation in the late nineteenth century leading up to the Philippine–American War at the turn of the twentieth century. In particular, the chapter explores the transnational diffusion of liberal ideas among Philippine revolutionaries developed during the period of Spanish colonial rule. In hopes of securing their independence after the Spanish–American War, Filipino leaders quickly developed a constitution based on republican ideals, a legislative body, and a declaration of independence and national self-determination. Paradoxically, such ideas and actions remained unpersuasive to American policymakers. With the Treaty of Paris formally ending the war with Spain in 1898, the United States acquired its first overseas empire. In response, Filipinos resorted to guerilla warfare, drawing the United States into its “first Vietnam.”

Chapter 6 returns to the social movement literature to create a framework to understand who joins post-election rallies and protests. Engaging the complex literature on differential participation, this analysis highlights the critical role of information in mobilization, and explains protest using life cycle variables such as age, education, and income; political interest; personal networks; regime support; and media consumption. This analysis demonstrates that both protesters and rally participants are more interested and better informed about politics than nonparticipants. The analysis also shows that while the regime incentivized pro-regime participation, the ralliers did support the regime and President Putin. The study also highlights the importance of micro-mobilizing structures such as networks on individual-level participation. Among protesters, online discussion helped build mobilizing personal networks and frame alignment. The second part of the chapter explores the meaning of inaction. This analysis shows that popular disengagement in Russia does not signal regime support but it is linked to perceptions that President Putin is crucial to addressing shared grievances.

Traditional Chinese and English historiography regards 1644 as the year of the Qing conquest of China, though most historians regard this as a shorthand for collapsing the long and complex process by which the Ming empire in China disintegrated and the Qing empire in southern Manchuria expanded to include China. However, by dismantling the concept of the Qing conquest of China as an event, and instead looking at the coterminous processes affecting political coherence across Mongolia, Manchuria, and China, the Qing conquest of Ming China emerges as a reunification of historical Chinese territories that had been fragmented by various forces in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Though attention in examining the Ming–Qing transition is usually directed toward the China borders with Mongolia and Manchuria, this essay proposes that the best geographical theatre for tracing these changes lies in Yunnan province, in southwest China.

This chapter first identifies the numerous ways in which scientific knowledge may gain legal significance in environmental disputes brought before ITLOS. It then discusses the framing techniques with which ITLOS adjusts the science-intensity of its legal inquiry. In particular, deeming science-intensive disputes justiciable, crafting precautionary justifications, mandating the parties’ expert-led co-operation in scientific issues, and utilizing scientific progress for setting a high bar for states’ due diligence obligations will be discussed. As to fact-finding, the chapter discusses the variety of evidentiary powers granted to the tribunal, and shows that it primarily relies on party-adduced evidence, while leaves its novel fact-finding avenues underutilized. The chapter concludes with discussing the causal tests announced by the tribunal on the rare occasions it has laid out a causal inquiry.

Chapter 4 focuses on the Russian case, showing that even weakly organized oppositions can influence electoral outcomes. The chapter demonstrates how central concepts in social movement theory, social movement organizations, opportunity structure, and mobilizing frames also influence the information environment in which elections are held. The narrative illustrates that between 2008 and 2011, the Russian opposition altered popular perception by creating a coalition across different types of protest groups. It also underscores that the opposition’s unwillingness and inability to work with labor organizations limited the reach of the nascent movement and precluded cross-class coalition that is central to regime breakthrough. Nonetheless, these changes generated new information about the structure and reach of opposition as the 2011 election approached. The regime response included organizing new, state-sponsored organization, the articulation of competing frames, and the judicious use of repression. While these efforts shored up core regime support they failed to stifle opposition signals and may have demonstrated growing fears as the next election cycle approached.

This chapter provides a comprehensive classification of the adjudicatory techniques identified in previous analytical chapters. As no unified approach manifests in the adjudicatory landscape with respect to handling scientific knowledge, the chapter discerns two parallel trends in the scientific engagement of major international fora. Certain practices impede or even preclude the intrusion of science into adjudicatory assessment and thereby downplay the role of science in the judicial inquiry; while others aim to incorporate scientific knowledge in the judicial analysis. The chapter provides a typology of judicial techniques that serve either to downplay science or to integrate it in the judicial analysis in terms of the framing of disputes, the process of fact-finding, the causal inquiry, and the standard of review. The comparative analysis also includes references to quasi-adjudicatory solutions of the UN Compensation Commission, and the US – Marshall Islands Nuclear Claims Tribunal. It also addresses good practices from domestic climate change litigation case law and US toxic tort jurisprudence to provide good practices of conducting a science-intensive judicial inquiry.