Judicial Decisions In International Law Argumentation

This book explores the question of how the multiplication of judicial decisions on international law has influenced the way in which legal findings in international law adjudication are justified. International law practitioners frequently cite judicial decisions to persuade. Courts interpreting international law are no exception to this practice. However, judicial decisions do much more than persuading: they enable and constrain interpretive discretion. Instead of taking the road of the sources of international law, this book turns to the somewhat uncharted terrain of legal argumentation. Using international criminal law as a case study, it shows how the growing number of judicial decisions has normalised courts' resort to them in legal justification and enabled some argumentative practices to become constitutive of international law. In so doing, it critically revisits the implications of an iterative use of judicial decisions, and reassesses the influence of the 'judicialisation turn' on the ways in which the meaning of international law is formed, shaped and reshaped by reference to judicial decisions.

This book is an updated and revised edition of Fundamentals of Legal Argumentation published in 1999. It discusses new developments that have taken place in the past 15 years in research of legal argumentation, legal justification and legal interpretation, as well as the implications of these new developments for the theory of legal argumentation. Almost every chapter has been revised and updated, and the chapters include discussions of recent studies, major additions on topical issues, new perspectives, and new developments in several theoretical areas. Examples of these additions are discussions of recent developments in such areas as Habermas' theory, MacCormick's theory, Alexy's theory, Artificial Intelligence and law, and the pragma-dialectical theory of legal argumentation. Furthermore it provides an extensive and systematic overview of approaches and studies of legal argumentation in the context of legal justification in various legal systems and countries that have been important for the development of research of legal argumentation. The book contains a discussion of influential theories that conceive the law and legal justification as argumentative activity. From different disciplinary and theoretical angles it addresses such topics as the institutional characteristics of the law and the relation between general standards for moral discussions and legal standards such as the Rule of Law. It discusses patterns of legal justification in the context of different types of problems in the application of the law and it describes rules for rational legal discussions. The combination of the sound basis of the first edition and the discussions of new developments make this new edition an up-to-date and comprehensive survey of the various theoretical influences which have informed the study of legal argumentation. It discusses salient backgrounds to this field as well as major approaches and trends in the contemporary research. It surveys the relevant theoretical factors both from various continental law traditions and common law countries.

The International Court of Justice at The Hague is the principal judicial organ of the UN, and the successor of the Permanent Court of International Justice (1923–1946), which was the first real permanent court of justice at the international level. This 2005 book analyses the groundbreaking contribution of the Permanent Court to international law, both in terms of judicial technique and the development of legal principle. The book draws on archival material left by judges and other persons involved in the work of the Permanent Court, giving fascinating insights into many of its most important decisions and the individuals who made them (Huber, Anzilotti, Moore, Hammerskjöld and others). At the same time it examines international legal argument in the Permanent Court, basing its approach on a developed model of international legal argument that stresses the intimate relationships between international and national lawyers and between international and national law.

"In a decentralized global system that lacks the formal trappings of domestic governance systems, most disputes between and among states and non- state actors never reach either a domestic or an international courtroom for some kind of authoritative resolution. This state of affairs continues, even with the creation of new international tribunals in recent decades. Despite, indeed because of, the relative scarcity of judicial settlement of disputes, international legal argumentation remains pervasive, but notably in a range of nonjudicial settings. States, corporations, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and even guerrilla groups make claims in international legal terms in political bodies like the United Nations' organs or domestic parliaments, private diplomatic discussions, and public statements in formal and informal settings. What purpose does such argumentation serve? What are its effects, intended and unintended? Who is engaging in the argumentation? Who is the audience? What, for that matter, counts as a legal argument and how is it different from other kinds of argument? These questions are not all new, but they have never been addressed systematically in one volume. Answering them is critical to a central goal for scholars and practitioners of international law and relations- to understand how international law actually operates in international affairs. This book probes these and other questions related to the place of international legal arguments from a multi- perspectival lens. It brings together a group of scholars and practitioners from around the world who have either written about or engaged in international legal argumentation outside of courtrooms. We draw on various theoretical traditions that address the phenomenon of argumentation in international affairs, either as an element of legal theory or of international relations theory. Yet our approach is largely inductive, looking at the actual practice of legal argumentation in a variety of settings and issue areas. From the cases, we seek to identify patterns and common themes in why, where, how, and to what effect the language of law is used outside of courts. This fills a significant gap in scholarship on international law and international relations by exploring the micro- process of communication using international law"--

This book provides expert analysis of the impact of international and national courts on the development of international law applying to armed conflicts.

Epistemic Forces in International Law examines the methodological choices of international lawyers through considering theories of statehood, sources, institutions and law-making. From this examination, Jean d'Aspremont presents a discerning insigh

This book evaluates the concept of the function of law through the prism of the International Court of Justice. It goes beyond a conventional analysis of the Court's case law and applicable law, to consider the compromise between supranational order and state sovereignty that lies at the heart of its institutional design. It argues that this compromise prevents the Court from playing a progressive role in the development of international law. Instead, it influences the international legal order in more subtle ways, in particular, in shaping understanding of the nature or form of the international legal order as a whole. The book concludes that the role of the Court is not to advance some universal conception of international law but rather to decide the cases before it in the best possible way within its institutional limits, while remaining aware of law's deeper theoretical foundations. The book considers three key elements: firstly, it examines the historical aspects of the Court's constitutive Statute, and the manner in which it defines its judicial character. Secondly, it considers the drafting process, the function of a dissenting opinion, and the role of the individual judge, in an attempt to discern insights on the function of the Court. Finally, the book examines the Court's practice in regard to three conceptual issues which assist in understanding the Court's function: its theory of precedent; its definition of the 'international community'; and its theory on the completeness of the international legal order.

Offers a new perspective on international law and international legal argumentation: to what event is international law a belief system?