Agora 8: International Law-Making

Chaired by Sir Michael Wood

The collapse of the Iron Curtain was hailed as the beginning of a ‘new world order’. Did it also usher in a new era in international lawmaking? Does article 38 of the Statute of the International Court of Justice still reflect the formal sources of international law? If not, what new sources have emerged? Has ‘soft’ law been used to circumvent the limitations imposed by the requirement of state consent? Have actors other than states become more important in the creation of international law? What of the Security Council’s role in international lawmaking?

Judicial law-making in international criminal law: the ligitimacy conundrum

MR MARJAN AJEVSKI, SJD Candidate, Central European University

Abstract: In the Oxford Companion to International Criminal Justice, in the essay on sources of international criminal law, judicial decisions take the stage as sources of law alongside treaties, custom and general principles as equals. The Aleksovski Appeals Chamber judgment of the ICTY, despite the constant judicial assurances to the contrary, firmly established the doctrine of judicial precedent and stare decisis in international criminal law.


The other three sources of law in Article 38 draw their legitimacy from the fact that they are the direct product of the two subjects of international law, states and international organizations. Judicial decisions are product of bodies that, by definition, are independent from the other two. The question that we can now pose is: what about Article 38 sources and the established system of legitimacy of international law?


Building on the work of Lasser and his two system of judicial legitimization, the Common law argumentative model and the Continental(French) Republican/systematic model, the author argues that adopting the argumentative model of judicial legitimization was the only reasonable choice for these tribunals despite a continental doctrine of sources. Starting from the need to fill in the huge gaps that were left in the Statutes of the ad hoc tribunals, the tribunals used the argumentative model to legitimize their decisions, which lead to the wide use of case-law in judicial deliberations, which lead to strengthening of the argumentative model, which lead to the formalization of the doctrine of stare decisis, which, in turn, entrenched the argumentative model.

Biography: Marjan Ajevski is an SJD Candidate in Comparative Constitutional Law at the Legal Studies Department, Central European University in Budapest, Hungary, where he also obtained an LL.M in Human Rights. He is also a graduate of the Faculty of Law at the University of Ss. “Cyril and Methodius” in Skopje, Republic of Macedonia. He has worked as a free legal aid council at the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights of the Republic of Macedonia prior to starting his post-graduate studies at the Central European University.

Ajevski - Draft ESIL Paper

top »

Law-making by scholarship? The dark side of 21st century international legal 'methodology'

DR JÖRG KAMMERHOFER, Research Fellow in Law, University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany

Abstract: Methodological confusion abounds in 21st century international legal scholarship and the dangers of admixing methods in order to support a preferred outcome are not always perceived. In this contribution, a particular aspect of methodological confusion will be criticised from the standpoint of a positivist-normativist approach. In new research areas like ‘constitutionalism’ we find a mix of international relations, legal and moralist methodologies. All this may be considered necessary ‘for a better tomorrow’, but it can be doubted whether such approaches lead to greater knowledge about the law. The new-found confidence of international lawyers in the power of their words has a dark side.


New approaches that transcend disciplines themselves hark back to an earlier period of thinking about scholarship. In constitutionalism, the methodological confusion means that from a classification of legal orders as ‘constitution’ scholars somehow create an additional function and derive norms which cannot be found in positive law, because they conform to their cosmopolitan ethos. From facts they make norms, which is ‘practical reason’, a concept as problematic as it is old, for it confuses perception and creation. This venerable notion must face up to its problems, for if legal scholars do not separate the legal method from the politico-empirical, what chance do we have left of finding the positive law? Some segments of international legal scholarship unwittingly seem to be asserting the political power of an enlightened cosmopolitan body of scholars to do better than the haphazard, imperfect, unsystematic and very much contingent positive law in force.

Biography: Jörg Kammerhofer is currently a Research Fellow at the Hans Kelsen Research Group (University of Erlangen, Germany), which is publishing a collected works edition of all of Hans Kelsen’s academic writings. He has written inter alia on the theoretical problems of customary international law, on self-defence under the Charter, on the International Court of Justice and on Kelsen’s conception of international law. His forthcoming book, Uncertainty in international law. A Kelsenian perspective, will be published by Routledge in July 2010. Since 2006 he has been a member of the ESIL Interest Group on International Legal Theory’s Co-ordinating Committee.

Kammerhofer - Draft ESIL Paper

top »

Typologie des résolutions de l'ONU créatrices de droit international général

MS ANNE-THIDA NORODOM, Attaché temporaire d'enseignement et de recherches, Universités Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne et Panthéon Assas

Résumé: L'identification des résolutions de l'ONU susceptibles de créer du droit international général a conduit à établir une typologie de ces résolutions, permettant ainsi de différencier deux processus de création du droit international par le droit dérivé des Nations Unies.


Il ne suffit pas que les résolutions soient obligatoires et relèvent du droit externe de l'Organisation pour qu'elles puissent créer de nouvelles normes internationales. La typologie de ces résolutions créatrices doit être plus fine en incluant également comme critères la normativité et la généralité de leurs dispositions. Chacun de ces critères conditionne le processus de formation du droit international par le droit dérivé des Nations Unies.


On propose alors de différencier un processus graduel par lequel la création du droit international par le droit des Nations Unies est indirecte. Dans ce cas, les effets de ces résolutions se manifestent d’abord dans l’ordre juridique de l’ONU, mais les États consentent parfois à octroyer à ces résolutions un effet juridique externe à l’Organisation. Il s'agit d'une institutionnalisation simple des processus classiques de création du droit international par le droit dérivé des Nations Unies. Ce droit peut également créer directement du droit international général selon un processus qu'on qualifiera d'instantané. Les résolutions concernées sont obligatoires et leur contenu normatif est général et abstrait. Leurs effets juridiques vont au-delà de l’ordre juridique de l’Organisation pour atteindre directement l’ordre juridique international sans que les États aient à renouveler de façon explicite leur consentement à être engagés par ces dispositions normatives particulières ; on parlera alors d’institutionnalisation complexe.

Biographie: Docteur en droit de l'Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne, Anne-Thida Norodom a soutenu en 2009 une thèse intitulée "L'influence du droit des Nations Unies sur le développement du droit international", sous la direction du professeur Yves Daudet. Elle assure depuis plusieurs années des enseignements en droit public, aussi bien interne qu'international, à l'Université Panthéon-Assas. Ces recherches actuelles portent sur la codification du droit international, le droit de la mer, le droit des organisations internationales et, plus spécifiquement, le droit de la sécurité collective dans le cadre de l'identification des nouvelles menaces pesant sur la paix et la sécurité internationales.

Norodom - Draft ESIL Paper

top »