Abram Chayes

Abram Chayes (July 18, 1922 – April 16, 2000) was an American scholar of international law closely associated with the administration of John F. Kennedy.

He is best known for his "legal process" approach to international law, which attempted to provide a new, less formalistic way of understanding international law and how it might further develop.

By focusing on how international legal rules are actually used by foreign policy decision-makers, Chayes sought to study international law, not within a vacuum of legal rules and procedures, but in a dynamic political environment.

Abram Chayes's full name was Abram Joseph Chayes, but he did not use his middle name.

He was born in Chicago.

His parents, Kitty and Edward Chayes, were both lawyers.

He graduated summa cum laude from Harvard College in 1943 and served in the U.S. Army from 1943 to 1945 as a field artillery officer in France, the Netherlands, Germany, and Japan, leaving the service with the rank of captain.

He received the Bronze Star and Purple Heart.

Chayes graduated first in his class from Harvard Law School in 1949, where he served as president of the Harvard Law Review.

After law school, Chayes was a legal advisor to Governor Chester Bowles of Connecticut from 1949 to 1951, and then served in Washington, D.C., as Associate General Counsel of the President's Materials Policy Commission in 1951.

In the late 1950s, Chayes was among the original members of a group of Harvard faculty members who worked on the presidential campaign of John F. Kennedy.

He clerked for Justice Felix Frankfurter of the United States Supreme Court from 1951 to 1952, and practiced law privately with Covington & Burling in Washington, D.C., from 1952 to 1955.

In 1955 he joined the faculty at Harvard Law School as an associate professor and began teaching courses in constitutional law and international law.

He led the team that drafted the 1960 Democratic Convention platform, and was one of Kennedy's principal issues advisers during the campaign.

When Kennedy was elected, he worked as Legal Adviser to the State Department.

Chayes played an important role in a number of major crises, including the Berlin Crisis of 1961 and the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.

He also worked on the Partial Test Ban Treaty of 1963 banning atmospheric nuclear tests.

In 1964, Chayes worked at the law firm of Ginsburg & Feldman in Washington, D.C., before returning to Harvard Law School in 1965, where in 1976 he became the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law.

Chayes developed a new international law course at Harvard and co-authored a widely used book, International Legal Process.

He also taught civil procedure and authored a widely cited article in the Harvard Law Review on the legal remedies and the difficulty of dealing with domestic social issues legally.

He worked on the 1968 presidential campaign of Senator Robert F. Kennedy, wrote articles on nuclear arms control, co-authored a book with Jerome Wiesner, President Kennedy's Science Adviser, on Anti-Ballistic Missiles and strategic policy, and advised Democratic members of the Senate in the debate in the early 1970s over ABM deployment (he was a strong supporter of the ABM Treaty of 1972).

In 1968, Chayes, along with Thomas Ehrlich and Andreas Lowenfeld, formally introduced a new approach to the study of international law by publishing a two-volume textbook entitled: International Legal Process: Materials for an Introductory Course.

The textbook focuses on three issue areas: 1) the limits of adjudication, 2) economic affairs, and 3) political problems, in order to provide a general introduction into the scope, adequacies and failures of an international legal system operating in a contemporary and complex international arena with new political actors, including a proliferation of international organizations. Each issue area contains problems that Chayes hoped would ignite classroom discussion and critical analysis, since, as he pointed out, most of these problems do not arise before courts or arbitral tribunals, but are debated by parties, under pressure from a variety of sources including NGOs and domestic lobbyists, during the policy decision-making process. Philip Heymann once said: “For Abe, problems were there to give joy to the people who tackled them.”

In 1972, Chayes advised the presidential campaign of George McGovern on foreign policy matters, and in 1976 was a foreign policy adviser to the presidential campaign of Jimmy Carter.

Chayes also wrote articles arguing that the Reagan Administration was barred from testing and deployment of the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), or "Star Wars" under the 1972 ABM Treaty.

Before returning to Harvard Law, Chayes received a grant from the Carnegie Corporation to publish The Cuban Missile Crisis.

In this publication, Chayes illuminated the interrelations of law and foreign policy decisions that created what many call the finest hour of Kennedy's Administration.

In doing so, he reinforced the notion that “law is not a set of fixed, self-defining categories of permissible and prohibited conduct” but instead is a dynamic set of normative rules that can guide foreign policy decision-makers.

In his book, Chayes focused his analysis on three major decisions: 1) the choice of the quarantine, as opposed to harsher or milder responses, 2) the decision to seek an O.A.S. authorizing resolution, and 3) the manner and method of the approach to the U.N. analysis of the situation. In doing so, he highlighted the principal ways in which international law affected the course of action adopted: first, as a constraint, then as a basis of justification or legitimation of action, and third as providing organizational structures, procedures and forums.

Because the presence of Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba did not constitute an armed attack on the United States, warranting a more aggressive unilateral response, the Kennedy Administration imposed a naval quarantine on Cuba.

This more restrictive response only blocked offensive military equipment from being imported.

A classic blockade, on the other hand, restricts all imports, including food supplies, and is considered an act of war.

Although the Soviet Union initially responded to the proposed quarantine by accusing the U.S. of “piratical acts” and “unheard of breaches of international law,” Washington lawyers took comfort in NATO support and a unanimous O.A.S. action authorizing the naval quarantine.

By gaining the approval of the O.A.S. and using the unique forum of the United Nations for the crystallizing and mobilizing of national government views, the U.S. gained support and neutralized opposition during the crisis.

In sum, Chayes noted the importance of the U.S. government's willingness to accept the obligation of international legal justification, and therefore, public accountability, during the successful mitigation of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

In doing so, the role of international law in decision-making advanced.

In the 1980s, Chayes argued on behalf of the Government of Nicaragua against the United States in the seminal International Court of Justice (ICJ) case Nicaragua v. United States.

The ICJ ruled that the U.S. was guilty of "unlawful use of force" when it mined Nicaragua's harbors.

He became professor emeritus in 1993, but continued to teach until incapacitated by complications from pancreatic cancer.

After leaving the Kennedy administration, Chayes remained politically active.