The Concept Of Unity In Public International Law

The proliferation of international courts and the extension of international regulation to new areas have been considered to be threatening for the unity of Public International Law as a legal system. These developments are the consequence of the increasing formation of legal subsystems (material international regimes) which continue to grow in complexity. How these trends affect the unity of the international legal system requires theoretical scrutiny of its fundamental bases. This work considers that the unity of the international legal system depends upon its normative structure, and on the social medium in which it is applied: the evolving international community. A unified international legal system has as its ultimate goal the protection of human dignity through the international regulation of human rights. The question of the unifying stability of the international legal system and the development of legal subsystems within it encourages a review of the major issues of current Public International Law, considering the evolution from traditional doctrines to recent approaches. This review is done from an analytical frame that provides a deeper understanding of the current situation of Public International Law as a legal system.

'Fragmentation' has become a defining, albeit controversial, metaphor of international law scholarship in the era of globalisation. Some scholars see it as a new development, others as history repeating itself; some approach it as a technical issue and some as the reflection of deeper political struggles. But there is near-consensus about the fact that the established vision of international law as a unitary whole is under threat. At the core of the fragmentation debate lies the concept of unity, but this is hardly ever rationalised and is more assumed than explained. Its meaning remains vague and intuitive. 'The Concept of Unity in Public International Law' attempts to dispel that vagueness by exploring the various possible meanings of the concept of unity in international law. However, eschewing one grand theory of unity, it identifies and compares five candidates. Intentionally pluralistic in its outlook, the book does not engage in normative arguments about whether international law is or should be unitary but seeks to show instead that the concept of unity is contested and that discourses on fragmentation are necessarily contingent. The thesis on which the book is based won the 2009 Prize for best doctoral thesis from the Association des professeurs de droit du Québec.

This book is a direct result of the publication of the 1994 Netherlands Yearbook of International Law, published in 1995. It was decided that the publication of the 25th Yearbook should be marked by a special volume written by current and former members of the Board of Editors, omitting the usual documentation sections. The central theme of this special volume is whether the secondary rules form a potential risk, constituting a threat to the global unity and efficacy of the international legal order. As many fields of international law as possible have been included: diplomatic law, the law of war, human rights, environmental law, and the law of international organizations (e.g. GATT/WTO and the European Communities). The research methods used are presented in an introductory paper, and results and conclusions are provided. The UN legal system is also accorded its rightful place in the research.

This book offers a comparative analysis of the institutional law of public international organizations, covering issues such as membership, institutional structure, decisions and decision-making, legal status, privileges and immunities. It has been designed to appeal to both academics and practitioners.

The book explores the main characteristics of contemporary theory in international law. It examines in an analytical fashion 32 schools, movements, and trends as well as the works of more than 500 authors on substantive issues of international law.

This major collection contains selected papers from the second Public Law Conference, an international conference hosted by the University of Cambridge in September 2016. The collection includes contributions by leading academics and judges from across the common law world, including senior judges from Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the UK. The contributions engage with the theme of unity (and disunity) from a number of perspectives, offering a rich panoply of insights into public law which significantly carry forward public law thinking across common law jurisdictions, setting the agenda for future research and legal development. Part 1 of the volume contains chapters which offer doctrinal and theoretical perspectives. Some chapters seek to articulate a unifying framework for understanding public law, while others seek to demonstrate the plurality of public law through the method of legal taxonomy. A number of chapters analyse whether different fields such as human rights and administrative law are merging, with others considering specific unifying themes or concepts in public law. The chapters in Part 2 offer comparative perspectives, charting and analysing convergence and divergence across common law systems. Specific topics include standing, proportionality, human rights, remedies, use of foreign precedents, legal transplants, and disunity and unity among subnational jurisdictions. The collection will be of great interest to those working in public law.

If international law is derived from the consent of States, who should be in a better position to say what has been consented to than the disputing States themselves? It seems that if the doctrine of consent is taken seriously, there would be no room for an 'objective' legal answer to the question `What is law?'. Furthermore, States do not necessarily employ the same criteria for determining the applicable law when engaged in dispute. And the doctrine of sovereignty is of very limited utility, since not all of substantive international law can be explained in terms of the atomic concept of sovereignty. This leaves consent as the mediating concept between the substantive doctrine of international law on the one hand and the actual practice of States (and others whose practice and participation in the global legal order help shape the body of international laws) on the other. Nevertheless, this is not to say that there is nothing `higher' than the actual legal claims forwarded by international actors. International law is no mere superstition, since none argue that there is no (one) legal solution. In that sense, the unity of the international legal order is preserved. The problem is that the solutions actually forwarded in dispute are too numerous and international law too abstract to serve as arbiters between the competing claims. Thus, at the level of substantive doctrine there is a fragmentation of that earlier-mentioned picture of unity. But even here, only consent can mediate between unity and fragmentation, stability and change, order and justice, legislation and revolution. The strength of international law lies in its adaptability to political, strategic and diplomatic necessities. To suggest otherwise is to depart from a picture of international law that presumes the empirical verifiability of international laws. This book has as its principal concern certain orthodoxies of `source thinking' in international law, and is aimed at working out the implications of these. It aims to show how certain theoretical conceptions have shaped the law in action, for good or ill. It will appeal to political theorists, diplomats, global decision-makers, and international lawyers who are interested in the question `What can we do with the international law that we have?', as distinct from the question `What should we do with international law?'.

A detailed comparative study of the institutional law of international organizations--i.e., those rules of law which govern legal status, structure, and functioning--that examines which different or similar institutional rules exist, and how different organizations have dealt with similar institutional problems. This edition revises and updates the second edition of 1980. The text contains 12 chapters: introduction; participants; rules for international organs; policy- making and administrative organs; advisory and supervisory organs; decision-making process; financing; legal order; interpretation and settlement of disputes; supervision and sanctions; legal status; and external relations. The authors jointly teach a specialized course on international institutional law at the Law Faculty, U. of Leiden. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR