The fact that interpreters care about their reputations when they interpret international law has important implications for the way in which international law functions and develops. Specifically, reputation can help to understand how international law stabilizes and changes. Wim’s thesis addresses the role of reputation in the practice of interpretation in international law.

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Reputation and the problem of stabilization and change in international law

Interpretation has traditionally been pictured as a rational process of distilling the ‘true’ meaning of the existing legal materials. This picture, however, has been subject to extensive criticism. Legal interpretation often involves not just logic, but choice: the available legal materials leave multiple viable alternatives on the table between which a choice has to be made. It turns the practice of interpretation into a political struggle between actors with very different interests associated with the law. This is particularly problematic in international legal practice: it often lacks centralized interpretation and enforcement mechanisms that facilitate the stabilization of legal meanings. In his thesis, Wim argues that in the frequent absence such mechanisms in international law, reputation has an important role in these processes of stabilization and change in the practice of interpretation: interpreters care about what others think of them, and therefore meaningfully orient their interpretations towards each other. Interpretations of international law stabilize and change as a result.

Interpretation as a social practice

Interpretation, Wim’s research suggests, is a deeply social practice, within which not just the arguments matter, but also, and perhaps particularly, the social relationship between those who are arguing with each other. As one of the most prominent ways through which social relations find expression in international law, reputation helps to render intelligible the often obscure decisions and dynamics in the practice of interpretation in international law.