4. International law and municipal law

2019 ◽  
pp. 78-102
Author(s):  
Gleider Hernández

This chapter assesses the relationship between international law and municipal law. Though international law deals primarily with inter-State relations, and municipal law addresses relationships between individuals or between individuals and the State, there are many overlapping issues on which both international and national regulation are necessary, such as the environment, trade, and human rights. Though the international legal order asserts its primacy over municipal legislation, it leaves to domestic constitutions the question of how international legal rules should be applied or enforced in municipal orders. Two conflicting doctrines define the relationship between international and municipal legal orders: dualism and monism. Dualism is usually understood as emphasizing the autonomy and distinct nature of municipal legal orders, in which the State is sovereign and supreme. Meanwhile, theories of monism conceive the relationship between international and municipal legal orders as more coherent and in fact unified, their validity deriving from one common source.

2020 ◽  
pp. 218-242
Author(s):  
Paola Gaeta ◽  
Jorge E. Viñuales ◽  
Salvatore Zappalà

This chapter deals with some fundamental realities of international law as a body of legal rules which traditionally requires implementation at domestic level through transposal. In so doing it discusses the traditional theoretical distinction between monism and dualism, as abstract approaches to the relationship between domestic and international legal order. It then tackles the issue of the effects (including direct effects) that international law may have in concrete situations within national systems, as a consequence of, or, in some instances even irrespective of, transposal through national legislation. Thirdly, the chapter discusses the ‘verticalization’ of the international legal order with the affirmation in the second half of the twentieth century of the notion of jus cogens (or peremptory norms) and the effects this has (or might have) within international law and in its relationships with municipal laws.


2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (127) ◽  
pp. 115-122
Author(s):  
I. Zabara

The article deals with one of the theoretical aspects of international legal order issues – the question of its properties. The author summarizes the doctrinal views of international law and regards the basic properties of the phenomenon of international legal order as its ability to act as system complexity, dynamism, orderliness, the reality and legitimacy of actions of subjects. The author notes that there is a common position in the doctrine, according to which the international legal order is a system. However, he notes that the difference in views on the international legal order as a system consists in the components the researchers include in its composition; the author examines two theoretical approaches. The complexity of the international legal order is determined from the standpoint of the number of its elements and components, as well as the number of their connections. This opinion highlights the fact that the predominant role is played by the quantity of links between elements and components, and indicates the international legal order capacity for permanent changes under the influence of the relevant internal and external factors. The dynamism of the international legal order is characterized from the point of capacity for the development and modification. It is stated that the state of the dynamics is effected by several circumstances. The author concludes that this international legal order’s property as a dynamism is one of the qualities that characterizes its condition as a system. The orderliness of the international legal order is considered from a consistency point, the interaction of parts of the whole, due to its structure. The author notes that the ordering of the international legal order displays its internal relationships and emphasizes its status as a system. The reality of the international legal order is characterized from the point of objectively existing phenomenon. The author concludes that the allocation of the international legal order of reality as one of its properties is intended to emphasize the status of one of its most important components - the state of international relations. Separately, the author considers the question of the legality of actions of subjects of international law, which are discussed in the doctrine from the standpoint of the conditions necessary for its maintenance. The author points out that in the general context of the properties that characterize the international legal order, it can be considered as an aspect wich together with other characterizes the state of the international legal order.


2012 ◽  
Vol 40 (6) ◽  
pp. 688-713 ◽  
Author(s):  
Seyla Benhabib

Carl Schmitt’s critique of liberalism has gained increasing influence in the last few decades. This article focuses on Schmitt’s analysis of international law in The Nomos of the Earth, in order to uncover the reasons for his appeal as a critic not only of liberalism but of American hegemonic aspirations as well. Schmitt saw the international legal order that developed after World War I, and particularly the “criminalization of aggressive war,” as a smokescreen to hide U.S. aspirations to world dominance. By focusing on Schmitt’s critique of Kant’s concept of the “unjust enemy,” the article shows the limits of Schmitt’s views and concludes that Schmitt, as well as left critics of U.S. hegemony, misconstrue the relation between international law and democratic sovereignty as a model of top–down domination. As conflictual as the relationship between international norms and democratic sovereignty can be at times, this needs to be interpreted as one of mediation and not domination.


2009 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 857-865
Author(s):  
THOMAS SKOUTERIS

Progress in International Law, edited by Russ Miller and Rebecca Bratspies, is one of the most notable compiled volumes in the field of general international law for 2008. It merits the reader's attention for several reasons. First, it deals with a central mantra of internationalism, namely the Kantian idea that international law can be a catalyst for social progress on a global level. While progress is regularly used in international law writings as a slogan to accentuate diverse claims of renewalism, it is a notion that has received as such little attention in scholarship. In this sense, the book at hand responds to an important gap in the literature. Second, the editors have clearly devoted a lot of attention in the planning and production of the book to ensuring that the essays are meaningfully juxtaposed, complementary, and in dialogue with one another. Although this is an essential quality for any compiled volume, it is easier said than done, and this book has done reasonably well. The final product boasts some forty contributors and more than 900 pages of text, packed together in an attractive (but steeply priced) hardback edition by Martinus Nijhoff (Brill). Third, the book aspires to ‘survey the state of the contemporary legal order’ (p. 11). This is a broad and unusually ambitious scholarly project aimed at ‘cataloguing this generation's tangled international legal order’ and hoping ‘to map the current tendencies, theories, doctrine, and trends’ (p. 11). This last promise alone would have been sufficient to trigger anyone's interest in the book at the beginning of (what is perceived to be) a new era of internationalism.


Author(s):  
Astrid Kjeldgaard-Pedersen

Chapter 2 identifies and explains the four theoretical conceptions of international legal personality, which will be tested against historical and existing norms of positive international law in Chapters 3–8. With particular focus on the role attributed to the individual as the ultimate subject of international law, the examination will concentrate on selected scholars’ conclusions on the criteria for, and the consequences of acquiring, international legal personality. Moreover, it will address the way in which proponents of the various conceptions perceive the relationship between the international legal order and national legal order(s) and the role of the concept of international legal personality in that regard. Given that a primary aim of the book is to ascertain the position of the individual as a matter of international lex lata, particular attention is given to the two main conceptions of international legal personality, which both claim to be positivist.


2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 234-283
Author(s):  
William E. Conklin

This article examines the place of Nomadic peoples in an international constitutionalism. The article claims that an important element of a Nomadic culture is its sense of law. Such a sense of law differs from a constitutionalism which has privileged fundamental principles aimed to constrain acts of the executive arm of the State. Such a constitutionalism is shared by many contemporary domestic legal orders. Public international law also takes such a constitutionalism for granted. In the focus upon rules to constrain the executive arm of the State, the sense of law in Nomadic communities has slipped through arguments which the jurist might consider inclusive of the protection of such communities. This problem is nested in a legacy which has weighted down the history of European legal thought. The article initially identifies three forms of nomadism. The social phenomenon of nomadism has been the object of juristic commentary since the Greeks and Romans. The image of Nomadic peoples in such a legacy has imagined Nomadic peoples as lawless although the article argues that a sense of law has existed in such communities. Such a sense of law contradicts a State-centric international legal order. Public international law has reserved a special legal space relating to Nomadic peoples. The article identifies four arguments which might be rendered to protect Nomadic peoples in such a State-centric international community. Problems are raised with each such argument


The question of the sources of international law inevitably raises some well-known scholarly controversies: where do the rules of international law come from? Through which processes are they made? How are they ascertained? Where does the international legal order begin and end? These traditional questions bear on at least two different levels of understanding. First, how are international norms validated as rules of international ‘law’, i.e. legally binding norms? This is the static question of the pedigree of international legal rules and the boundaries of the international legal order. Secondly, what are the processes through which these rules are made? This is the dynamic question of the making of these rules and of the exercise of public authority in international law. This book explores the various facets of the sources of international law. It provides a systematic overview of the key issues and debates around the sources of international law, including recent contestations thereof. It also offers an authoritative theoretical guide for anyone studying or working within but also outside international law wishing to understand one of its most fundamental questions.


2015 ◽  
Vol 1 (5) ◽  
pp. 0-0
Author(s):  
Анатолий Капустин ◽  
Anatoliy Kapustin

The article discusses the role and function of international law in the transformation of the modern world order. A brief description of the main features of international contemporary international relations and the role of international law in maintaining international legal order is given. The relationship and interaction of international policies of States and international law is examined. Scientific schools of international law exploring the relationship of international law and foreign policy are analyzed. In this regard, the author draws attention to the problem of the legitimacy of international law and established international legal order. The assessment of challenges to the legitimacy of international law and its reflection in the current international legal theory is made.


Author(s):  
I. Zabara

The article deals with the theoretical aspects of the key issues of international legal order. The author describes the phenomenon of international legal order based on conceptual views of representatives of modern Ukrainian school of international law. The author examines and summarizes the international legal doctrinal views which define and determine the formation of modern international legal order. The author identifies several fundamental areas of international legal order. The first line shows the sectoral focus of research. The author notes that in this line of questions explored the legal basis of international legal order in certain areas of international law; conceptual aspects of formation of international legal order in a particular area of international law; the relationship between the principles of international law and the principles of international legal order; the role of international law and its subjects in the development of international law in certain areas. Within this framework have been identified and studied the principles of international legal order in the spatial (space, sea) branches of international law, and in some areas the actual activities of international law. The second trend reflects the regional focus of research of international legal order. The author notes that within the area studied questions of general principles of formation and development of regional order; especially the formation and development of some regional order; regional impact of law enforcement on the national transformation of individual states. Within this framework singled out themes, covering the European legal order, Asian international legal order, African legal order, American legal order and other types of international legal order.


Author(s):  
Hilary Charlesworth

This chapter investigates the relationship between the concepts of international justice and international law. It suggests that the idea of an international rule of law is constructed on procedural, rather than substantive, accounts of justice. Against the background of two opposing tendencies in the international legal order that influence ideas of international justice, namely the Westphalian and UN Charter accounts, the chapter considers various attempts to incorporate notions of justice in the international legal order. Examples are drawn from the 1970s campaign for a New International Economic Order at the UN, from international adjudication, from feminist campaigns, and from the work of international legal scholars such as Thomas Franck and Steven Ratner. The chapter argues that the concept of international justice has become associated largely with international criminal law, and indicates the limitations of this linkage.


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