Election Interference: International Law and the Future of Democracy

Jens David Ohlin — a law professor at Cornell and one of the leading scholars of international criminal law — makes the legal case that foreign election interference violates international law under the principle of self-determination: that democratic elections are the mechanism through which peoples exercise their sovereign right to determine their own governance, and that foreign interference in that process is therefore an unlawful violation of sovereignty regardless of whether it involves any kinetic element. The argument won the 2021 Roy C. Palmer Civil Liberties Prize.

The legal analysis is rigorous and important for practitioners advising government clients on the international legal framework for responding to foreign interference. But the book's significance extends beyond its doctrinal contribution: Ohlin's framework provides a principled basis for distinguishing legitimate foreign commentary on democratic processes from unlawful interference — a distinction that is practically important for governments seeking to respond to influence operations without restricting legitimate political speech. His engagement with the specific mechanisms of Russian and Chinese interference gives the legal analysis concrete grounding that purely doctrinal treatments often lack.