The author examines the place of consent in treaty interpretation at the time of the marginalization of the role of the intention of the parties. Whether the characterization of international law as a legal system grounded in State consent has ever been empirically true is, as he argues, open to discussion. For him, the law of treaties, however, is commonly seen as ‘a bastion of consensualism’. This sense of confidence has, however, never sat easily with treaty interpretation. The author claims that, despite the lip service sometimes paid to the fiction of the common intention of the parties, the official doctrine of treaty interpretation rests on the primacy of the terms of the treaty.

Democracy is not only about voting. Deliberation plays an important role as well. Just like voting, deliberation can occur behind closed doors in the shadows or be subject to the glare of sunlight. In this chapter I argue that deliberation among representatives in a legislature ought to occur behind closed doors and away from the glare of sunlight, but only if it is structured properly. More specifically, I propose a new way of institutionalizing secret deliberation that secures its benefits while avoiding its costs. The key is to add external accountability mechanisms of a very specific kind to the deliberative process and to select participants in the secret deliberative body in a very particular way. If we do both things, then democratic deliberation is optimized when it occurs behind closed doors.