Following the attacks of 9/11, the United States adopted a policy of torturing suspected terrorists and reinterpreted its legal obligations so that it could argue that this policy was lawful. This article investigates the impact of these actions by the United States on the global norm against torture. After conceptualizing how the United States contested the norm against torture, the article explores how US actions impacted the norm across four dimensions of robustness: concordance with the norm, third-party reactions to norm violations, compliance, and implementation. This analysis reveals a heterogeneous impact of US contestation: while US policies did not impact global human rights trends, it did shape the behavior of states that aided and abetted US torture policies, especially those lacking strong domestic legal structures. The article sheds light on the circumstances under which powerful states can shape the robustness of global norms.

In the years following the attacks of 9/11, the CIA adopted a program involving the capture, extraordinary rendition, secret detention, and harsh interrogation of suspected terrorists in the war on terror. As the details of this program have become public, a heated debate has ensued, focusing narrowly on whether or not this program “worked” by disrupting terror plots and saving American lives. By embracing such a narrow view of the program’s efficacy, this debate has failed to take into account the broader consequences of the CIA program. We move beyond current debates by evaluating the impact of the CIA program on the human rights practices of other states. We show that collaboration in the CIA program is associated with a worsening in the human rights practices of authoritarian countries. This finding illustrates how states learn from and influence one another through covert security cooperation and the importance of democratic institutions in mitigating the adverse consequences of the CIA program. This finding also underscores why a broad perspective is critical when assessing the consequences of counterterrorism policies.

How does treaty withdrawal affect the prospects of international cooperation? One common explanation is that withdrawal causes states to develop reputations for unreliability. Another suggests that the consequences of withdrawal follow from its material costs. I argue, instead, that withdrawal shapes international cooperation through the breach of trust. When states exit treaties unilaterally, they violate the norm that agreements must be kept, undermining the foundation of trust upon which cooperation is based. As a result, treaty members begin to opt out of ratifying agreements with the withdrawing state whereas treaty non-members take no such action. I test this argument by applying a difference-in-differences design to an original dataset consisting of the universe of multilateral treaties recorded by the United Nations. I complement this statistical analysis with a case study of France's withdrawal from the NATO status of forces treaty. Throughout, I find evidence consistent with my theory. These findings point toward the important but overlooked interplay between norms and trust in shaping the evolution of multilateral cooperation.

I argue that treaty withdrawal has two opposing effects on the development of international law. First, it directly impacts the treaty where it occurs by pushing remaining members to adopt reforms to maintain cooperation. Second, it indirectly affects the development of other treaties by damaging diplomatic relations between the withdrawing state and other members, hindering negotiations in other areas of cooperation. The impact of withdrawal on legal development is consequentially mixed: while it expedites the reform of one treaty, it inhibits reform elsewhere. I test this argument by applying a difference-in-differences design to an original panel of treaties built from the records of the United Nations. My findings reveal that while withdrawal increases the number of reforms in treaties where it occurs, it decreases reforms in other similar treaties with comparable memberships. The indirect effect cancels out the direct effect; overall, treaty withdrawal contributes to the stagnation of international law.

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