The Praxis-Belief Continuum: Revealing Customary International Law through AI-Assisted Analysis
Artificial Intelligence and Technology in Law
Customary international law (CIL) is a foundational yet complex area of international law. It emerges from consistent state practices carried out with a sense of legal obligation, known as opinio juris. Identifying CIL requires sifting through vast and scattered evidence—diplomatic exchanges, legislation, court rulings, and debates—often in multiple languages and formats. Traditional manual methods are slow and frequently incomplete.
The project "The Praxis-Belief Continuum" seeks to apply artificial intelligence to this challenge. By leveraging AI, especially large language models (LLMs), it becomes possible to systematically map the connection between what states do (practice) and what they claim as law (belief). This approach aims to clarify how binding norms form and evolve through state interactions.
LLMs can analyze enormous volumes of text, identify patterns, extract legal arguments, and reveal relationships between actors and their positions. This allows for a more comprehensive and transparent identification of customary international law. Such technology could be invaluable in ongoing legal debates, such as those concerning environmental law obligations before international courts.
Bridging Legal Expertise and AI
International law involves intricate legal reasoning that AI alone cannot fully grasp. The project integrates legal expertise with AI technical skills to ensure that tools developed are sensitive to legal nuances and grounded in sound theory. For example, detecting opinio juris requires understanding both the legal concept and how it is expressed in text, which calls for collaboration between law experts and AI specialists.
This partnership fosters innovative methods for extracting legal arguments and identifying norms. It also aims to explore the relational dynamics of custom—how states influence each other and form coalitions supporting certain norms. This relational view moves beyond isolated evidence to a richer understanding of how customary law operates.
Creating Accessible Tools for the Legal Community
The project intends to build an open-access, interactive platform to democratize research on customary international law. This platform will give smaller states, academics, and practitioners access to advanced tools for analyzing state practice and legal belief without the need for extensive resources.
This transparency supports more predictable international relations and evidence-based decision-making by policymakers and courts. By fostering inclusivity, the platform could help level the playing field in international legal scholarship and practice.
Next Steps and Broader Implications
The immediate phase involves a six-month fellowship starting February 2025, focusing on a test case area of CIL. This will include compiling datasets, developing preliminary AI algorithms, and building a proof-of-concept platform. Collaboration with data science and AI research centers will be key to this effort.
Following this pilot, the goal is to secure a larger grant to expand the project into a five-year investigation. Workshops and symposia will be held to engage the academic and practitioner communities, ensuring the tools developed meet real-world needs.
Beyond customary law, AI has the potential to improve treaty analysis, predict dispute outcomes, assist in legal drafting, and enhance access to justice globally. However, challenges remain, including algorithmic bias, accountability, and regulatory gaps. Research efforts will address these issues to ensure AI benefits the international legal system responsibly.
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