Cold War Protagonists

Abstract

This essay honors William E. Butler’s contributions to the study of Soviet/post-Soviet law and governance in the broader political context of the Cold War. Consistent with the spirit of the festschrift volume in which it is published, this story is told through a set of personal and allegorical reflections regarding the study of law and governance in moments of tremendous political pressure and transformation. Aside from acknowledging the centrality of Butler’s work to our understanding of the dynamic processes driving legal reform in Eurasia, the essay highlights Butler’s role in building institutional linkages between Anglo-American and Soviet legal academics and recalls parallel institution-building efforts during the Cold War, such as the rivalry between the American Committee on East-West Accord (ACEWA) and the Committee on the Present Danger (CPD). The central argument here is that, even in moments of intense ideological and geo-political hostility between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R., institutional venues that facilitated ‘dialogue,’ ‘collaboration’ and ‘bilateral exchange’ did not merely serve as conduits for the exchange of people and ideas across hardened battle lines; more than that, depending on nature of their institutional form, they served as incubators for heterodox thinking on law and governance and offered valuable, and still underappreciated, opportunities for engagement between academics and policymakers. Normatively, the essay then draws several reflections regarding the start of a ‘Second Cold War’ and highlights the need for new institutional structures for the study of this conflict.

Keywords: Russian law, Soviet law, USSR, Cold War, Cold War 2, Second Cold War, former Soviet Union, American Committee on East-West Accord (ACEWA), Committee on the Present Danger (CPD), legal history, international legal history, comparative law