| Summary: | Megan Donaldson's The Survival of the Secret Treaty: Publicity, Secrecy, and Legality in the International Order recounts the ways in which lawyers played an important but complicated role in governmental decisions about whether and when to register secret agreements. On the one hand, these lawyers urged their governments to comply with the League of Nations and UN Charter registration processes. On the other hand, these same lawyers used their drafting and interpretive skills to enable their governments to employ secrecy where necessary, while helping their clients minimize the fact and size of any legal violations that occurred. They thus urged legal compliance on the front end and reduced the extent of noncompliance on the back end.
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