Our thanks to the editors of this special issue, the editors of International Organization, and two reviewers for helpful comments and suggestions. We also want to thank Martha Finnemore, David Weissbrodt, Richard Price, Timothy Buckalew, Ann Towns, and Maria Florencia Belvedere for comments, advice, and assistance.

1. See Sikkink 1996; and Clark, forthcoming.

2. Amnesty International 1975.

3. Restatement of Foreign Relations Law of the United States (Third), Section 702.

4. Filártiga v. Pena-Irala, 630 F.2d 876, 890 (2d Cir. 1980).

5. 5 R v Bartle and Commissioner of Police for the Metropolis and others, ex parte Pinochet, House of Lords, 24 March 1999.

6. The definition in the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, the treaty elaborating on the prohibition against torture that is most widely ratified by Latin American states, is:

any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in, or incidental to lawful sanctions.

7. Forti v. Suarez Mason, 697 F. Supp. 707 (N.D. Cal. 1988)Google Scholar.

8. Inter-American Convention on Forced Disappearance of Persons, done at Belém, Brazil, 9 June 1994, 33 I.L.M. 1529Google Scholar.

9. That treaty provides

forced disappearance is considered to be the act of depriving a person or persons of his or their freedom, in whatever way, perpetrated by agents of the state or by persons or groups of persons acting with the authorization, support, or acquiescence of the state, followed by the absence of information or a refusal to acknowledge that deprivation of freedom or to give information on the whereabouts of that person, thereby impeding his or her recourse to the applicable legal remedies and procedural guarantees.

10. Reproduced in Vaky and Munoz 1993.

11. AG/RES. 1080-(XXI-0/91), Representative Democracy, Resolution Adopted at the Fifth Plenary Session, 5 June 1991, reproduced in Vaky and Munoz 1993.

12. 1-E Rev. OEA Documentos Officiales OEA/Ser.A/2 Add 3 (SEPF). Signed 14 December 1992; entered into force 25 September 1997.

13. Amnesty International says that Costa Rica is the only country in Latin America from which they had received no torture allegations of any kind in the year preceding the preparation of the report. Amnesty International 1975, 191.

14. Amnesty International 1984, 143–79.

15. Amnesty International 1999.

16. United Nations 1992–1999. 1999 Report of the Special Rapporteur on Torture.

17. UNGA Res.33/173, 20 December 1978.

18. United Nations 1991. The list of countries in Latin America that practiced disappearance almost completely overlaps with the list of countries that practiced torture during the same period, so it should be clear that although we examine these rights separately, they are linked in practice.

19. New York Times, 25 May 1997, 4Google Scholar.

20. See Amnesty International 1999; and United Nations 1998. The UN Working Group also reported it had received one newly transmitted case from Ecuador.

21. Palmer 1996, 257–58.

22. See Sunstein 1997; and Lessig 1995. For an interesting overview by a journalist, see Rosen, Jeffry, The Social Police: Following the Law Because You'd Be Too Embarrassed Not To, The New Yorker (20–27 October 1997), 170–81Google Scholar.

23. On “norms cascades,” see Sunstein 1997; and Finnemore and Sikkink 1998.

24. See, for example, Alvarez 1943. For a survey of this historical tradition, see Sikkink 1997.

25. The human rights include those in Art. 1 (right to life, liberty, and personal security); Art. 2 (right to equality before the law), Art. 3 (right to religious freedom and worship), Art. 4 (right to freedom of investigation, opinion, expression, and dissemination of information), Art. 18 (right to a fair trial), Art. 25 (right of protection from arbitrary arrest), and Art. 26 (right to due process of law). See OAS Resolution XXII of the 2nd Special Inter-American Conference OEA/Ser. E/XIII.I Doc. 150 Rev. (1965); and Medina Quiroga 1990, 439–41.

26. Articles 44–51 of the American Convention on Human Rights.

27. In 1999, twenty-five of the thirty-five members of the OAS had ratified the American Convention, and twenty-one had accepted the contentious jurisdiction of the court, including most of the key members of the organization, but significantly excluding the United States. This number is a significant increase from the ten members accepting the contentious jurisdiction of the court in 1990.

28. See Latin America, 11 February 1977, XI (6)Google Scholar; and Schoultz 1981, 350.

29. Servicio Paz y Justicia Uruguay 1992.

30. Ibid.

31. One preliminary report is Simon 1990, but it does not provide systematic reports of numbers of victims of repression.

32. Amnesty International, “August 1977 Addendum” to Briefing Paper on Paraguay published in July 1976Google Scholar.

33. Amnesty International 1977a, 9–13.

34. See the article in this issue by Robert Keohane, Andrew Moravcsik, and Anne-Marie Slaughter, which also discusses the different dynamics that result when individuals have direct access to legalized international regimes.

35. Servicio Paz y Justicia Uruguay 1992.

36. After taking power, the military could have rescinded Uruguay's ratification of the covenant but chose not to do so, perhaps because it saw no harm from continued embrace of an international human rights treaty that was not yet in force.

37. Macdermot 1981. During its early years, the UN Human Rights Committee decided more cases against Uruguay than against any other country.

38. See, for example, Inter-American Commission on Human Rights 1978.

39. Latin American Political Report, 10 February 1978, XII (6)Google Scholar.

40. Macdermot 1981, 88.

41. Schoultz 1981, 295.

42. Gillespie 1991, 109–110.

43. Barahona de Brito 1997.

44. Inter-American Commission on Human Rights 1979. Because Paraguay had not ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights or its First Optional Protocol, the Human Rights Committee never had the opportunity to consider petition from Paraguayan victims of human rights violations.

45. Americas Watch 1995, 4.

46. Americas Watch 1986, 3. Also see Carter 1990.

47. Filártiga v. Pena-Irala, 630 F.2d 876, 890 (2d Cir. 1980)Google Scholar.

48. Filártiga v. Peña-Irala, 577 F. Supp. 860, 866 (S.D.N.Y. 1984)Google Scholar.

49. Letelier v. Republic of Chile, 488 F. Supp. 665 (D.C.D.C. 1980)Google Scholar.

50. Forti v. Suarez Mason, 672 F. Supp. 1531 (N.D. Cal. 1987)Google Scholar, reconsidered, 697 F. Supp. 707 (N.D.Cal. 1988); Martinez Baca v. Suarez Mason, Civ. Action No. C-87–2057-SC (N.D. Cal. April 22, 1988)Google Scholar; Rapaport v. Suarez Mason, Civ. Action No. C-87–2266-JPV (N.D. Cal., April 11, 1989)Google Scholar.

51. Xuncax v. Gramajo, 886 F. Supp. 162 (D.C. Ma 1995)Google Scholar.

52. As cited in Claude 1992, 336.

53. Interview with DrFilártiga, Joel, Asuncion, Paraguay, 2 January 1996Google Scholar.

54. United Nations 1992–1999.

55. Amnesty International 1981, 1, 75.

56. Amnesty International 1977b.

57. U.S. Congressional Research Service 1979, 106.

58. El Diario del Jucio, No. 28, 3 December 1985, 5–8Google Scholar.

59. Rock 1989, 370–71. This understanding of divisions within the military was reinforced during interviews with military officers and civilian policymakers of the Videla government, conducted in Buenos Aires in July–August 1990.

60. Carta Política, a news magazine considered to be very close to the military government, commented that international pressures on Argentina continued to increase and concluded that “the principal problem facing Argentine State has now become the international siege.” de Situación, Cuadro, Carta Política 57 (August 1978), 8Google Scholar.

61. Interviews with Walter Mondale, 20 June 1989, Minneapolis, Minn., and Robert Pastor, 28 June 1990, Wianno, Mass.

62. See Asamblea Permanente por los Derechos Humanos 1988, 26–31.

63. Mignone 1991, 56–57.

64. See Medina Quiroga 1990, 442–43.

65. See Mendez and Vivanco 1990, 507, 535; Velásquez Rodríguez Case, Judgment, Inter-Am. Ct. H.R. (ser. C) No. 4 (1988)Google Scholar; and the parallel Godiñez Cruz Case, Judgment, Inter-Am. Ct. H.R. (ser. C) No. 5 (1989)Google Scholar. For convenience, this article will refer only to the Velásquez Rodríguez Case.

66. Velásquez Rodríguez, supra, n. 65, para. 166–67.

67. Ibid., para. 166.

68. Ibid., para. 182.

69. New York Times, 14 February 1986.

70. Yearly figures compiled from the “List of Disappeared in Honduras,” Human Rights Watch/Americas Watch 1994.

71. U.S. Department of State 1998.

72. Schulz and Sundloff Schulz 1994, 269.

73. Franck 1992, 46.

74. New York Times, 3 June 1993.

75. Interview with Judge Jorge Mario García Laguardia, Mexico City, 6 June 1996.

76. Interviews with Helen Mack, Leila Lima, and Daniel Saxon, Guatemala City, 22, 23 May 1998.

77. Amnesty International listed neither reports of torture nor of new disappearances in Guatemala in 1998, though it expressed alarm over the continued high level of extra-judicial executions. Amnesty International 1999.

78. Sunstein 1997, 38.

79. See Elster 1989; and Sunstein 1997.

80. Sunstein, who invented the term, does not define it more precisely nor does he demonstrate its operation for purposes of research. Sunstein 1997. Picker presents a fascinating computer simulation model of norms cascades but also does not define or show how norms cascades operate in the real world. Picker 1997. Finnemore and Sikkink also do not show the operation of a norms cascade, although they suggest that where treaties exist on an issue, the entry into force of a treaty might be a useful proxy for the “tipping point” that begins a norms cascade. Finnemore and Sikkink 1998.

81. Kratochwil and Ruggie 1986.

82. See Schoultz 1981; Forsythe 1989; Lauren 1998; Donnelly 1989; and Sikkink 1993.

83. Sunstein 1997, 36.

84. New York Times, 29 November 1998. The International Herald Tribune, 24 August 1999, mentions a “Pinochet Syndrome” humbling dictators of the world.

85. Goldstein et al., this issue.

86. See Finnemore 1996; and Risse, Ropp, and Sikkink 1999.

87. Claude 1966.