Afterword: Laurence Boisson de Chazournes and Her Critics

• Streinz, Thomas 1

Abstract

By asking about ‘winners and losers’, this reply questions the preference of states for a plurality of international courts and tribunals, challenges the coherence of the international legal order as a dominant rationale for judicial actors to coordinate, and raises doubts about their overall success in managing plurality. It argues that their coordinating efforts have to be understood as reactive rather than proactive steps in a complex decision-making environment in which litigants, their lawyers, and domestic courts play a significant but underappreciated role. While it is true that some coordination between judicial actors exists, it remains to be seen whether the ‘threads of a managerial approach’ amount to more than thin, singular, and often random strings that will develop into dense, resilient, and predictable webs of international jurisprudence.

• 1Fellow, Institute for International Law and Justice, New York University School of Law, USA