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The Normativity of Public International Law Reconsidered

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 March 2021

Rüdiger Wolfrum
Rüdiger Wolfrum*
Affiliation:
Max Planck Foundation for International Peace and the Rule of Law.
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Extract

The Order of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) of January 23, 2020 on the Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (The Gambia v. Myanmar) might form a preliminary starting point for this brief address. The Order confirms that public international law defines through international treaties, customary international law, and general principles legally binding commitments and rights of states. As a matter of consequence, based upon those norms, judgments, orders, and awards of international courts and tribunals are legally binding on the parties to the dispute in question to the extent the adjudicating body has jurisdiction.

Type
Annual Hudson Medal Discussion
Information
Proceedings of the ASIL Annual Meeting , Volume 114 , 2020 , pp. 33 - 37
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The American Society of International Law.

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Footnotes

Rüdiger Wolfrum of the Max Planck Foundation for International Peace and the Rule of Law, and discussant Edith Brown Weiss of Georgetown University Law Center, provided the Annual Hudson Medal Discussion on Thursday, June 25, 2020 at 10:15 a.m.

References

1 The term is used, for example, in: the Global Compact for Migration; the Paris Agreement on Climate Change; the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification in Those Countries Experiencing Serious Drought and/or Desertification, Particularly in Africa, 1994 (Desertification Convention); the Convention on Biological Diversity, 1992; and the Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer, including its Montreal Protocol. An identical approach is at the heart of the international human rights regime. For example, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948 refers to a “common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations.” In its Advisory Opinion on Reservations to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, the ICJ stated that states have no interest of their own in the object of that Convention, but merely a common interest. This ruling played a significant role in the Order of January 23, 2020 mentioned above.