Larry Catá Backer (Penn State Dickinson Law) has posted The Conceptual Architecture of America First: Ideological Transactionalism and the Case of Cuba on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
Since 2016 the conceptual basis of the foreign relations architecture of the United States has experienced a profound dialectic. On the one side is the contemporary product of a long evolution of conceptual premises that are grounded in the orienting conception of an institutional state overseen by an expert techno bureaucracy in the service of institutions around which political, economic, social, and cultural life is organized both domestically and in relations with other similarly organized institutions in the public and private sphere. This had produced both the deeply institutionally integrated systems of international organizations and of e4conomic globalization around which the rules based legal order operated. On the other side were forces of opposition to this vision that emerged in a dominant form with the election of President Trump in 2016 and again in 2024. This oppositional vision was grounded in a rejection of centering the organization of collective life around and through institutions. It did not reject institutions as such; it sought to refocus the driving force of social organization from institutions to the transactions that with respect to which institutions and other actors. While this possible cognitive shift appears at first blush to be one of emphasis, its consequences can be significant . This essay has two objectives. The first is to sketch out the current framework of conceptual transactionalism around which America First is evolving. The second is to consider its application in the case of the Cuban crisis of 2026.
To receive new posts from Legal Theory Blog by email, get a free subscription to Legal Theory Stack.
Lawrence Solum