What makes a human rights argument effective? When challenging a state's human rights practices, actors can draw on a range of discursive options and frames. Current research on human rights argumentation highlights the strategic use of different rhetorical frames by actors to create political outcomes on a case-by-case basis. This analysis, however, is the first to measure the determinants of effective argumentation, the role of legal rhetoric, and the patterns that make successful arguments, on a global and systematic scale. This study uses data on all recommendations from the first two cycles of the Universal Periodic Review, covering all United Nations member states, a United Nations mechanism by which all states are reviewed regularly on their human rights practices. Using an original coding of legal and nonlegal recommendations, this paper tests the theory that arguments framed on legal references will be the most effective, emphasizing the particular importance of legal rhetoric in international politics. The findings support this theory, showing that human rights arguments framed with legal references are substantially more likely to succeed than those framed on other grounds. These findings raise important points for the role of legal rhetoric in human rights and in international relations more broadly.

中文翻译：

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国际法的论证力：法律修辞、人权和普遍定期审议

是什么使人权论点有效？在挑战一个国家的人权实践时，行为者可以利用一系列的话语选项和框架。当前对人权论证的研究强调了行为者战略性地使用不同的修辞框架，以根据具体情况创造政治结果。然而，这项分析是首次在全球范围内和系统地衡量有效论证的决定因素、法律修辞的作用以及成功论证的模式。本研究使用了普遍定期审议前两个周期的所有建议数据，涵盖所有联合国会员国，这是一个联合国机制，所有国家都通过该机制定期接受人权实践审查。本文使用法律和非法律建议的原始编码，检验了基于法律参考的论点将是最有效的理论，强调了法律修辞在国际政治中的特殊重要性。研究结果支持这一理论，表明以法律参考为框架的人权论点比以其他理由为框架的人权论点更有可能成功。这些发现为法律修辞在人权和更广泛的国际关系中的作用提出了重要观点。