Straining to Prevent the Rohingya Genocide: A Sociology of Law Perspective
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This paper analyzes the generally muted international response to the protracted plight of the Rohingya, a persecuted Muslim minority in Myanmar, from the perspective of sociology of law. The first part provides background on the Rohingya crisis and discusses relevant international legal frameworks relating to crimes against humanity and genocide. The second part adapts analytical frameworks developed by Felstiner, Abel, and Sarat on the emergence and transformation of disputes, in order to examine some of the factors that frustrate the processes of naming crimes, blaming perpetrators, and claiming rights and protection for the Rohingya minority in the international context. Work by Bumiller and Edelman concerning models of legal protection, legal ambiguity, and the mediating effects of symbolic structures of compliance augment the analysis. Ambiguity as to when to apply the terms crimes against humanity or genocide, and the legal and political implications that flow from naming such crimes, feed reluctance to act on the part of states. Related factors constraining effective responses include a lack of a clear, streamlined process for naming crimes, along with weak preventive norms mandating action in the absence of legal certainty. As a result of these conditions, authority diffuses as to which institutions or actors have the power and obligation to name crimes and determine appropriate responses. Competing political and economic considerations obfuscate states’ willingness to engage the issue, and certain organizations and bodies have limited capacity to enforce their prevention and protection mandates or to submit them to external scrutiny. Together, these factors combine to portray a weak institutionalization of remedies, which Miller and Sarat have recognized serves to minimize disputing and limit the probability of success. This sociological approach thus helps to clarify fundamental constraints on and distinguishing characteristics of the international legal system in responding to atrocities.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.008 | 0.006 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.012 | 0.060 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.010 | 0.012 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.005 |
| Research integrity | 0.006 | 0.004 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".