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Samenvatting Inleiding internationaal en Europees recht Rechtsgeleerdheid
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lOMoARcPSD|11911780Inleiding internationaal/ EU recht - Rechtsgeleerdheid
Chapter 1
Introduction
International law is traditionally defined as the system of law that
regulates the interrelationship of sovereign states and their rights and
duties to one another, but to that must be added a host of other actors,
most notably international organizations and individuals who also possess
rights and/or obligations under international law.
Early modern international law
Europe in the late Middle Ages was characterized by both multiple levels
of different allegiances and rights and obligations as well as the universal
political and religious forces of the Holy Roman Empire and the Catholic
Church.
By providing the spiritual authority of the Western world, the Pope in
particular was
able to exert considerable influence over the various princes, emperors
and kings who governed their territories.
It was also a time when ideas about the normative structure of the world
were dominated by theories of natural law originally developed in the
classic eras. Natural law contained an all-embracing set of ideas about
natural and social life in the universe and, though primarily focused on the
individual and his or her relations to the world, it also applied to states by
virtue of the fact that rulers were also individuals and therefore subject to
it.
Next to natural law was jus gentium, a law of people/nations and
hence inferior to natural law, at times simply perceived as being derived
from the latter.
In the 17th and 18th centuries we begin to see the contours of a modern
international legal system.
For one thing, a much clearer distinction was introduced between jus
naturale and
jus gentium and it is from the latter that international law as we know
subsequently develops.
As among other things, Hugo Grotius was instrumental in applying
natural law to international relations and developing the law of nations to
make it a practical tool for regulating a variety of areas of international
relations.
Peace of Westphalia
The international legal system that we recognize today is generally tied to
the emergence and consolidation of nation states in Europe.
The birth of the international state system is usually traced to the 1648
Peace of
Westphalia that brought an end to the Thirty Years War that had ravaged
continental Europe.
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The major European powers sought to establish a semblance of order
and structure in an otherwise anarchical and disorderly European world.
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The idea was to reduce the powers of transnational forces, like empire
and religion, and instead compartmentalize territory and individuals into
sovereign states.
The 19th century and the era of positivism
The 19th century was dominated by a full-on assault on the idea that
acts of states could be judged according to transcendent ideals of
fairness or divine will.
This was the era of positivism, the primary tenet of which was that
the only true source of law was state will.
According to the consensual theory, unless a state has consented to be
bound by a rule, no international legal obligation exists and the state
remains entitled to act as it pleases.
Unlike natural law, then, positive law does not envisage a universal legal
system,
but rather one that is fragmented and in which states are bound by
different legal obligations.
The interwar period
The primary development was the creation in 1919 of the League of Nations,
an organization tasked with maintaining world peace.
A major achievement in the period was the successful establishment of
the Permanent Court of International Justice (PCIJ) based in The Hague.
Although the court did not have compulsory jurisdiction, it did build a
substantial body of case law and was the forerunner to the present day
International Court of Justice (ICJ).
The period after the Second World War
The period immediately after the second world war was a time of major
achievements in international law. For one thing, one of the ways in which
the world reacted to the atrocities of the Nazis was to prosecute top
German officials for international crimes before a war crimes tribunal,
thereby setting an important precedent in international criminal law.
More importantly, the League of Nations was replaced by the United
Nations (UN), which was entrusted with the maintenance of international
peace and security.
The UN is built on solid Westphalian principles and based on respect for
the
principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples and on the
sovereign equality of all its member states.
In 1946, it established the International Law Commission (ILC)
whose primary purpose is to promote the progressive development
of international law and its codification.
An important regional organization is the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO) whose members agree to offer each other mutual
defence in the event of an attack by an external actor.
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The present
For the most part, the post-second World War developments in
international law were driven by the West, which used its dominance in
world affairs to create a rules-based international order less prone to the
sort of economic protectionism and authoritarianism that led the world
into the chaos and mass slaughter of the Second World War.
The relationship between international law and national law
International law asserts its own supremacy over national law. A state cannot
justify a breach of its international legal obligations by arguing that
compliance would be at variance with its national law.
National implementation and concrete application of
international law is a constitutional issue that varies from state to
state.
Most presentations begin the discussion with the two different approaches
that
have dominated legal theory, monism and dualism.
- Monism holds that international law and national law essentially
form a single legal order or a set of mutually intertwined legal
orders presumed to be coherent. It also holds that international law
can be applied directly in the national legal system of states and
that the international norm prevails in the case of conflict.
- Dualism holds that international law and national law are two
separate legal systems that operate independently. While
international law primarily regulates the relationship between
states, national law governs the relationship between citizens or the
citizens and the state.
Following a dualistic approach, neither of the two legal systems
creates
rules for the other, and if international law is applied domestically it
is because it is translated into the national legal system.
Chapter 2
Article 38 of the Statue of the International Court of Justice
The classical attempt at listing the sources of international law is found in
article 38 of the ICJ Statute:
o International convention
o International custom
o The general principles of law recognized by civilized nations
o Subject to the provisions of article 59, judicial decisions and the
teachings of the most highly qualified publicists.
While the former is constituted by conventions, customary law and general
principles, the latter refers to judicial decisions and scholarly contributions.
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