Interdisciplinary views on the interaction of international and domestic law: New evidence from a migrant rights database.

Presented by Assoc Prof Anna Boucher and Eda Gunaydin 

Abstract: International relations, political science and international law provide different accounts of the relationship between international and domestic law and how this relationship should be measured and assessed. International relations scholars focus on how international law affects norms at an aggregate level. Political science queries whether the nature of political systems and their level of democratization affects the ways in which international law is incorporated or enforced and how effectual this enforcement is. International law concerns itself with the particular mechanisms by which international law is ratified and incorporated into domestic law and its uses by judges irrespective or insight of the mode of incorporation. These three disciplines are involved in different levels of specificity in their analysis of the role of international law as it is enforced domestically, and the mechanisms by which it occurs. More work is needed to better understand these different levels and to provide an empirical basis to explore how international law is enforced domestically – if at all.

This paper presents findings from the Migrant Worker Rights Database in which close to 1000 court cases were analysed in order to ascertain the extent and role of international law in influencing judicial outcomes. It then takes a deep dive into two of those cases to trace the exact pathways by which international law influences judicial decision-making.

Presenters/short bio: Associate Professor Anna Boucher is a global migration expert. Her book Gender Migration and the Global Race for Talent analyses skilled immigration policies globally from a gender perspective. Her second book, with Dr Justin Gest, Crossroads: Immigration Regimes in an Age of Demographic Change compares immigration regimes across 30 countries. She has written a third on workplace violations against migrant workers in Australia, Canada, England and California, Patterns of Exploitation: Understanding Migrant Worker Rights in Advanced Democracies, which is forthcoming with Oxford University Press. A fourth book, The First Holocaust Songbook, covers the Holocaust and the creation of a global Jewish diaspora and is co-authored with Dr Joseph Toltz. It is under contract with Manchester University Press. She is a regular commentator in the media and consultant to government on migration issues. She holds degrees in law and political science. Prior to coming to Sydney University, she was an Australian Commonwealth Scholar and Bucerius Scholar in Migration Studies at the London School of Economics. From 2021, she is a Research Stream Lead of the James Martin Institute for Public Policy and from November 2021, admitted as a solicitor by the Supreme Court of NSW.

Eda Gunaydin is a graduate student in the Department of Government and International Relations at the University of Sydney. Her key research interests are in the areas of gender, race and violence in international relations. In 2016 she received the University Medal in Government and International Relations, and she has been a research assistant in the Department since 2015. Recently interviewed by E-International Relations, you can read more about her here.

Date: 25 November

Time: 1:15-2:30pm

Zoom link: https://uni-sydney.zoom.us/j/81120598861