Research Programme: The Symbiosis Between Public International Law and National Law — Studies in the Enforcement of Public International Law in the National Legal Order, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands

2001 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 249-252
Author(s):  
Author(s):  
Trinh Hai Yen

This chapter explores international law in Viet Nam. It is difficult to comprehensively conceptualize international law in Viet Nam’s legal system. There is no formal documentation concerning two of the main sources of public international law: international custom and general principles of law. Treaties, by contrast, are dealt with in great detail. Viet Nam adopts a modified monist approach by maintaining the primacy of the Constitution and the priority of treaties and incorporating treaties into the muninipal law on a case-by-case basis. The use of treaties in Viet Nam can be divided into two phases: (i) colonial times and (ii) since independence in 1945 when modern Viet Nam, proactively relying on international law in the quest for ultimate independence and unification in 1975 and since, started a period of robust engagement in the international legal order. The chapter finally looks at Viet Nam’s current practice of concluding and enforcing treaties.


2013 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
ANDREAS FOLLESDAL

AbstractThis paper explores subsidiarity as a constitutional principle in international law. Some authors have appealed to a principle of subsidiarity in order to defend the legitimacy of several striking features of international law, such as the centrality of state consent, the leeway in assessing state compliance and weak sanctions in its absence. The article presents such defences of state-centric aspects of international law by appeals to subsidiarity, and finds them wanting. Different interpretations of subsidiarity have strikingly different institutional implications regarding the objectives of the polity, the domain and role of subunits, and the allocation of authority to apply the principle of subsidiarity itself. Five different interpretations are explored, drawn from Althusius, the US federalists, Pope Leo XIII, and others. One upshot is that the principle of subsidiarity cannot provide normative legitimacy to the state-centric aspects of current international law on its own. It stands in need of substantial interpretation. The versions of subsidiarity that match current practices of public international law are questionable. Many crucial aspects of our legal order must be reconsidered – in particular the standing and scope of state sovereignty.


2013 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 239-241 ◽  
Author(s):  
JANNE E. NIJMAN

Professor Emeritus of Public International Law Pieter Hendrik (Peter) Kooijmans passed away on 13 February 2013. He leaves a lasting void within the international-law community both inside and outside the Netherlands.


2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 6-23
Author(s):  
Pierre-Marie Dupuy

Twenty years have passed since the author's delivery in 2000 of the general course of public international law at the Hague Academy of International Law, titled ‘The Unity of the International Legal Order’. That course was designed to combat the all-too-common idea that international law was in the process of ‘fragmentation’. It did so by developing a theory focused on the existence of and tension between two forms of unity in the international legal order: the formal unity (concerning the procedures by which primary norms are created and interpreted, and their non-compliance adjudicated) and the material unity (based on the content of certain norms of general international law, peremptory norms). Twenty years later, the time is ripe to revisit this theory to determine the extent to which it is still valid as a framework for the analysis of international law, particularly as an increasing number of ‘populist’ leaders very much seem to ignore, or voluntarily deny, the validity of some of the key substantial principles on which the international legal order was re-founded within and around the United Nations in 1945. When confronted with the factual reality of the present state of international relations as well as with the evolution of the law, one can conclude that the validity of the unity of the international legal order is unfailingly maintained, and that its role in upholding the international rule of law is more important now than ever.


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


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