Deze aantekeningen zijn gebaseerd op het vak Public International Law (PIL) in 2015-2016.

Topic 1: International Law as a System

Lecture Notes + readings

Take away note: ‘international law is not only just a set of global values reflected in rules and principles; it is also a concrete framework for regulation’.

The scope of public international law includes international humanitarian law, international criminal law, protection of the environment and the law of sea and human rights law. International law cannot compare with national legal systems (which have executive, legislature and judicial branches that are highly developed in a completely different structure). International law as a system has not yet reached the same level of maturity as domestic legal systems.

The international community is regulated by, inter alia, the United Nations Security Council, the General Assembly and the Geneva Human Rights Council, however the system is still incomplete. There is no world government. Suffice to say, international law as a system manifests itself in two principles.

First, international law is a kind of normative framework for the management of international relations and global legal order. This system is partly laid down in the United Nations (UN) Charter, other UN treaties, UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, etc. Second, there is a prohibition of going to war and using force. Accordingly, fundamental principles of international law include the full settlement of disputes, respect for human rights, state sovereignty, state immunity, Security Council sanctions etc.

Sources of International Law

The sources of international law can be found in article 38(1) of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) Statute. Under this article, the primary sources of international law are treaties, international custom and the general principles of international law. The subsidiary sources are judicial decisions and teachings of the most highly qualified publicists. Other sources of international law can be found in decisions by international organisations, soft law and unilateral acts and declarations.

Treaties are a particularly important source of international law. Article 2(1)(a) of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties states that a 'treaty' means an international agreement concluded between States in written form and governed by international law, whether embodied in a single instrument or in two or more related instruments and whatever its particular designation. It a State does not approve the treaty or has not ratified it – the State will not be bound. However, the State may still be bound by customary international law......read more