What is International Law?

Blaise Pascal Unable to make what is just strong, we made what is strong just
Private international law is the law applicable to the relations between individuals and
corporations when those relations are international, that is when those relations are not
entirely located in one State.
o Private international law is sometimes called "conflict of laws" because it is about
resolving the conflict between the various domestic laws and jurisdictions that could
potentially apply in a case, and choosing the right one.

o That choice is usually to be made by application of domestic rules in treaties that those
States have contracted.
Public international law, or to make it short, international law, is sometimes called the Law of
Nations.
In Roman times, Roman law was applicable between the citizens of Rome, while the law
applicable between the Roman Republic (or the Roman Empire)
o Jus gentium was common to both the Romans and the rest of the world. It was said to
be common to both because it was said to derive from reason and was close to natural
law.
o Jus gentium was human, whereas Jus civile was specific to a people: the Roman people.

o Today, international law is still referred to as "le droit des gens" in French, or
Vlkerrecht in German.

Kadesh had been contracted around 1259 BC between the Hittites and the Egyptians.

A Brief History of International Law

Modern international law was born in 1648 out the peace treaties of Osnabruck and Munster.

The reason for what is called the "peace of Westphalia" to be used as the starting point of
modern international law is that the paradigm underlying the peace treaties was the equal
sovereignty of States on their respective territories and without a higher authority above them.

Two higher authorities that had shaped European history for centuries lost much of their
influence: on the temporal side, the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire; on the spiritual side,
the Pope.

o The legal bounds of hierarchy, allegiance and authority that existed between the
Emperor and the Pope on the one hand, and the European princes and monarchs, on
the other, those bounds were definitively replaced by a new understanding of the
relation between the kings and princes. That new understanding is based on equal
sovereignty.
 The model of equal sovereignty is a model of a liberal legal order where

The model of equal sovereignty is a model of a liberal legal order where each polity adopts for
itself its own laws and eventually contracts with other equal entities to create obligations
between them. But none of them has the authority to impose obligations on the other or to
command that other entity.

International law is horizontal and decentralized.

The public law of Europe established by the peace of Westphalia spread around the world to
become the fundamental paradigm of international law.

An international organization was set up for the purpose of maintaining international peace and
security. That organization was called the "League of Nations" and its Covenant was the first
part of the peace treaty of Versailles.

'The outlawry of war' was achieved by the treaty of Paris of 1928, which is also called the
Briand-Kellogg Pact as it was a joint idea of the French and the American foreign affairs
ministers. About ten years later, however, international law bitterly proved its limits again.

A new principle of international law emerged and it radically changed the face and the agenda
of the international community: it is the right of peoples to self-determination, understood as
the right of European colonies to become independent.

o But then again, and despite the revolutionary aspect of the right to self-determination,
the basic structure of international law did not change: colonies wanted to become
what their former masters were, they wanted to become States.

o The fundamental paradigm of international law remained the equal sovereignty of

States.

International law was not only a matter of peace and security in the narrow sense of the world:
three fundamental issues -development, human rights and the protection of the environment -
those three new issues created a new sense of interdependence between the nations of the
world, gave new dimensions to the notion of peace and security and directly challenged the
paradigm of State sovereignty on which international law had so far been built and which
international law had protected.

The creation for instance of the World Trade Organization, of the Yugoslav and Rwandan
International Criminal Tribunals, of the International Criminal Court, of the Organization for the
Prohibition of Chemical Weapons

All that suddenly came to an end with the terror attacks of 9/11 and, even more, with the
invasion of Iraq in March 2003 by the US and UK forces. Multilateralism came to a halt and was
replaced by unilateralism, sometimes clothed in so-called coalitions of the willing. But coalitions
 also proved to have limits and more problems arose. While coalitions come and go, institutions
are resilient and their international law instruments remain.

International law remains one if not the only viable tool that can provide legitimacy for action in
the world and foster coexistence and cooperation between States.

is sometimes called the Law o