Resolutions are imitated globally and aggregate the voice of Congress.

An initial puzzle concerns the moral status of the Declaration itself. If the Declaration merely embodied universal or widely held moral views, then it is not clear what the Declaration adds to this prior moral consensus. Writing down our moral views on a piece of paper should not make them any stronger. On the other hand, if the Declaration deviates from moral views, then presumably the Declaration would not have much moral force. 77

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Some scholars have argued that states might imitate other states that enjoy greater international prestige. See, e.g., Ryan Goodman & Derek Jinks, How to Influence States: Socialization and International Human Rights Law, 54 Duke L.J. 621, 671 (2004).

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To understand how norms might spread, suppose that agents have some but not full information about the state of the world; that their beliefs are independent, that is, not derived from the same sources or sources that are in some way correlated; and that they sincerely express their views through a voting process. As the size of the group increases, the probability that the majority will vote correctly approaches one. So even if each individual has only a low probability of being correct, a relatively small group will jointly reveal the correct state of the world with a probability that rapidly approaches one as the group size increases. This phenomenon is known as the Condorcet Jury Theorem.

In the real world, people who vote in groups do not always satisfy these conditions. They do not always vote sincerely, and they sometimes have zero rather than a little information about the issue in question. If individual members of a group pick the wrong answer more often than the right answer, then the aggregate judgment of the group will not tend towards accuracy. Nonetheless, the larger point is that when an institution (or person) expresses its views about a topic, it reveals information that others can benefit from, and the informational benefits can sometimes be dramatic. 79

Let us distinguish two types of facts: descriptive and normative (moral). A descriptive fact is that the Armenian Genocide occurred. A moral fact is that the Armenian Genocide was wrong. No one doubts that descriptive facts exist; the case for moral facts is more complicated, but it is at least plausible that certain moral judgments are facts or otherwise have the necessary features such that the Condorcet Jury Theorem can be applied to them. 80

In the case of congressional resolutions, the Condorcet Jury Theorem operates at two levels. The congressional resolution aggregates the votes of members, and the congressional resolution can be treated as one vote in a larger, more informal national or global debate about a particular moral or descriptive fact. If one thinks that the members of Congress voted sincerely and had independent (or roughly independent) sources of information, then one should be more inclined to believe that the Armenian Genocide occurred (and was wrong, assuming that moral facts exist) as a result of the resolution. And if multiple legislatures, governments, or other institutions around the world issue similar resolutions or statements, and one believes that they vote sincerely and on the basis of independent sources of information, then one's inclination to believe that the genocide occurred should be strengthened. A similar point can be made about resolutions that praise military withdrawals and peace agreements, 81 condemn human rights violations, military threats, and internal meddling, 82 urge reform in foreign countries, 83 and identify domestic problems that need attention. 84