Hague Academy of International Law – författare

Rethinking the United Nations: 75 and Beyond, by Nawaf SALAM, Judge at the International Court of JusticeWhat remains of the world that existed in 1945 when the United Nations was founded? Clearly not much! The world has changed, and new socio-political realities have emerged. Hence, the fundamental question that arises today is whether this post-second world war organisation can still meet the different and complex challenges of our time. It was this difficult question that Judge Nawaf Salam tried to answer in a lecture he gave at The Hague Academy of International Law during its 2023 summer session.Drawing on his unique and long experience as a practitioner and insider in the three main organs of the United Nations (General Assembly, Security Council and International Court of Justice), Judge Salam identified the main changes in the contemporary international order and the challenges they pose for the United Nations. Notwithstanding its past shortcomings, owing to its universal membership, its general purpose, the legitimacy it brings, its neutrality and impartiality, and its norm-setting advantages, the United Nations remains at the centre of such efforts and is needed more than ever. both as a forum and a tool. However, in his opinion, it is only a reinvigorated - or better, a reformed - United Nations that could live up to the new challenges of our changing times.Le rôle du droit international dans le contrôle des sentences arbitrales, par Dominique HASCHER, Juge international à la Cour suprême deSingapourL’introduction du droit international dans le contrôle des sentences révèle la force d’attraction de ce droit quand la sentence lui est soumise. Cette attraction révèle qu’il n’est pas possible de faire abstraction de l’ordre juridique international qui a donné naissance à la sentence dont les objectifs et la cohérence sont mieux préservés qu’avec le droit national. Le droit international peut aussi s’inviter, même si la sentence ne lui est pas soumise. Un droit international plus conquérant ne doit cependant pas déborder le contrôle. Le recours aux règles d’interprétation de la Convention de Vienne sur le droit des traités et au principe de proportionnalité démontre que l’intervention du droit international joue un rôle modérateur. Les principes mobilisés empruntent à plusieurs ordres juridiques qui se trouvent en réseau dans l’ordre international. Ils sont un langage universel et des éléments de communication. Une jurisprudence ouverte à l’influence du droit international suppose d’entreprendre une motivation qui parle aux autres et la conscience de participer à la sécurisation de la justice arbitrale. Dans cette perspective, le contrôle ne servirait plus qu’à écarter les sentences qu’on ne peut accueillir. On aura ainsi évolué vers une reconnaissance d’emblée des sentences.Legal Facets of the Practice of International Organizations, by Niels BLOKKER, Professor at Leiden UniversityThe aim of this special course is to discuss a number of legal facets of the practice of international organizations. A first legal facet is ‘practice as a rule’. Here, the notion of ‘established practice’ will be analyzed. The second legal facet covered by this course is ‘practice as a power’, discussing the power generating capacity of the practice of international organizations. The third legal facet concerns practice of international organizations as an interpretative device. The fourth and fifth legal facet will analyze how the International Court of Justice and the International Law Commission have dealt with the practice of international organizations in their work.

La dimension humaine du droit international, Cours général de droit international public, par Linos-Alexandre SICILIANOS, doyen de la faculté de droit de l’Université d’Athènes

August Reinisch: The Settlement of Disputes Involving International OrganizationsThis book deals with the various aspects of the settlement of disputes involving international organizations. It provides a comprehensive overview of the different forms of disputes on the international level, mostly arising from headquarters issues between states and international organizations, but it also sheds light on less well-known forms of disputes between members and non-members with international organizations which are settled before such diverse mechanisms like the WTO, ITLOS or regional international economic organization adjudication or arbitration. It addresses negotiation, mediation and fact-finding as well as adjudicatory means of dispute settlement. The book then analyses the most important forms of the settlement of disputes with private parties, ranging from international courts, administrative tribunals, and arbitral tribunals to national courts and their limited role because of the jurisdictional immunity regularly enjoyed by international organizations. Based on this overview, issues like access to justice, the limited jurisdiction of courts and tribunals, due process and adequate forms of dispute settlement are discussed, and some policy recommendations are made.

La vie internationale des individus met en contact les systèmes de droit et aiguise entre eux divers conflits techniques ou oppositions de vues. L’humanité a développé de très longue date des mécanismes propres à surmonter ces discordances. Une propriété cardinale du droit est ainsi maintenue dans les relations transfrontières ou transcommunautaires : la cohérence, à savoir la rationalité et la prévisibilité des règles de conduite civile, corrélativement leur efficacité, dans l’intérêt bien compris des individus et des collectivités politiques. Ces mécanismes spécialisés, créés par les juristes afin de résoudre les conflits internationaux de lois, de juridictions ou d’autorités, sont principalement appliqués à l’échelon étatique. Ils évoluent à la mesure des problèmes rencontrés et des transformations générales du phénomène juridique. De nos jours, les conflits de lois ne se limitent plus au champ du droit privé étroitement entendu ; ils concernent aussi les discordances juridiques en droit public ou dans les domaines hybrides, dits régulés. Les régimes juridiques a- ou trans-nationaux s’offrent aussi en alternative aux droits étatiques, de même que les modes privés de règlement des différends, tel l’arbitrage, suscitent des frictions et discordances nouvelles avec la justice publique. Surtout, l’accentuation des mobilités individuelles et les mutations technologiques neutralisant la distance géographique appellent des coopérations accentuées entre les pouvoirs politiques, lesquelles font apparaître des institutions supra-étatiques de coordination. La fin des autarcies juridiques, nationales et autres, constitue le juste écho de la mondialisation des vies.En ce début de troisième millénaire, la quête de cohérence doit être abordée dans deux directions successives. D’abord, l’horizontalité classique des rapports entre sphères juridiques indépendantes permet de reconstituer, par prises en compte réciproques et interactions, une cohérence juridique autour des situations privées transnationales ou ubiquitaires. Ensuite, et plus exceptionnellement, une verticalisation institutionnelle ressurgit qui permet à certaines autorités d’agir, en surplomb des Etats, au bénéfice des individus. En résultent parfois de nouveaux conflits, mais surtout une possibilité de sanction des incohérences constatées au sein ou à l’intersection des sphères juridiques particulières. Favoriser la cohérence du droit à l’échelle planétaire, c’est ainsi une affaire de méthodologies juridiques, ancestrales et toujours aptes à répondre aux frictions juridiques des temps modernes ; c’est aussi, à titre complémentaire, une affaire d’institutions internationales qu’il nous faut perfectionner dans l’intérêt commun.

Hélène Tigroudja, Conflits armés et droit international des droits de l’hommePrenant pour point de départ l’affirmation, par la Cour internationale de Justice en 1996, selon laquelle les droits de l’homme s’appliquent en période de conflits armés, le cours explore sous un angle à la fois théorique et pratique ce qu’implique cette irruption des droits de l’homme – et des mécanismes internationaux de surveillance - dans un champ qui, pendant longtemps, a été considéré comme exclusivement ou principalement conduit par le droit des conflits armés. Au-delà de l’humanisation de ce dernier, l’approche des conflits en termes de droits subjectifs individuels ou collectifs, opposables aux États et justiciables - y compris en ce qui concerne les droits économiques, sociaux, culturels et environnementaux -, constitue un vecteur puissant de l’autonomisation et d’autodétermination de l’individu, même dans des contextes aussi destructeurs et liberticides que les situations de violences généralisées. Pour autant, le cours vise aussi à présenter les insuffisances et limites du droit international des droits de l’homme pour appréhender les comportements des groupes non-étatiques et des organisations internationales par exemple, ou bien encore la réparation intégrale des violations graves et massives. S’appuyant sur une analyse approfondie et comparée de la pratique de la Cour internationale de Justice, des juridictions pénales internationales, des organes universels et régionaux de protection des droits de l’homme (cours régionales, organes de traités des Nations Unies, procédures spéciales du Conseil des droits de l’homme), le cours invite à réfléchir de manière critique au rôle potentiellement préventif, protecteur et transformateur du droit international des droits de l’homme face aux conflits armés.Inger Österdahl, The Regulation of the InternetFor more than 25 years, since 1998 the item of “[d]evelopments in the field of information and telecommunications in the context of international security” has been on the agenda of the United Nations (UN) General Assembly. This course deals with the normative results so far of the debates in the UN General Assembly, in the form of General Assembly resolutions primarily, reports of working groups, states’ positions taken on the application of international law in cyberspace, and international conventions that have been worked out within the framework of the UN General Assembly and that have been proposed and might potentially be worked out in the future. The discussions in the General Assembly mostly concern the way in which international law applies on the Internet; whereas initially it was uncertain whether international law would apply or not on the Internet, the discussions today concern not whether but how international law applies. How international applies on the Internet, however, is a question that so far remains unresolved among the members of the UN General Assembly.

Andrés RODRÍGUEZ BENOT, Le régime économique des couples en droit international privéLa communauté de vie pendant le mariage ou le partenariat enregistré produit des effets patrimoniaux qui peuvent se projeter soit au plan interne entre les conjoints ou les partenaires, soit à l'égard des tiers. L'institution du régime patrimonial du couple est l'une des plus complexes qui soient en droit interne et en droit comparé. Ses difficultés se multiplient à l'échelle internationale lorsqu'un mariage ou un partenariat sont rattachés à au moins deux systèmes juridiques pour des raisons personnelles, matérielles, territoriales ou formelles.Afin d'aborder cette institution de manière systématique et actualisée, le présent ouvrage analyse, entre autres, les efforts déployés pour sa codification et ses perspectives procédurale, de fond ou ad intra (aspects substantiels et conflictuels) et ad extra (rapports avec les tiers). L'objectif de cet ouvrage est de fournir aux juristes – théoriciens comme praticiens – les éléments permettant une compréhension complète de la matière du point de vue international et comparé.P. J. MARTINEZ-FRAGA, Settlement and Risk Assessment in International Commercial ArbitrationIn the name of “efficiency” international commercial arbitration stakeholders have agreed to forego (i) second instance review, (ii) fulsome due process, (iii) transparency in exchange for privacy, (iv) finality over accuracy, (v) the number of parties to a dispute pursuant to a principle of consent that constraints the number of parties to a proceeding, (vi) Free Proof over strict evidential principles and exclusionary rules, and (vii) party appointment of decision-making over the appearance of objective process legitimacy.In the context of these concessions, it is necessary to ask whether international commercial arbitration (ICA) has redeemed its promise to be efficient when less than 40% of all ICA proceedings settle? If the answer to this query is in the negative, how then, are merits-based adjudications more in keeping with ICA’s core principle of party-autonomy instead of resolution pursuant to settlement and mutual accord? Can resolution pursuant to a zero-sum game by dint of third-party adjudication redeem ICA’s promise to be efficient? Is not settlement by mutual consent the most fulsome exercise of party-autonomy?The discussion focuses on revisiting ICA procedural and evidential frameworks to explore ways in which settlement, here defined as optimal efficiency, may be maximized. It does so by examining whether and the extent to which ICA’s current procedure and evidential frameworks provide for the necessary risk assessment conducive to optimal efficiency: settlement.

Campbell McLachlan, On the Interface Between Public and Private International Law, General Course on International LawOur understanding of the operation of law beyond the State has been deeply shaped by two great disciplines: public and private international law. Yet surprisingly little systematic attention has been devoted to the relationship between the two. This is the first General Course at the Academy to examine this interface comprehensively, looking at the impact of each system on the other. McLachlan argues that understanding how the interface operates is highly consequential for law’s capacity to control the State and the corporation, which are, respectively, the principal holders of public-political and private-economic power in the world.Andrew Dickinson, Natural Justice in Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign JudgmentsThis special course assesses the utility of ideas of ‘natural law’ and ‘natural justice’ as tools to explain, rationalise and develop the rules governing the recognition and enforcement of foreign judgments currently applied by the world's legal orders.After introducing the topic, the first part of the course consider how influential 17th and 18th century accounts of the law of nature sought to account for the relations existing between all human beings, as well as the creation of political societies with law-making powers, the global ordering of those societies and the role of adjudication as a means of resolving disputes within and among them. This provides the historical and intellectual background for what follows.The principal part of the course considers how writers on the conflict of laws in this period drew upon and utilised these ideas, as the rules that we apply today to regulate foreign judgments began to take shape. This leads to a study of the further evolution of the legal landscape in the 19th century, highlighting the use of natural law reasoning by judges and commentators to explain and justify the effectiveness of individual exercises of adjudicatory authority beyond their original domains, as well as the later rejection of natural law thinking in favour of models centred on ideas of sovereignty and territoriality, which continue to dominate today.Having completed this historical survey, the course examines the specific legacy of natural law reasoning in the common law world, involving the use of principles of ‘natural justice’ to deny recognition of unjust foreign judgments, as well as the counterparts of these principles in other legal systems and international treaties.Drawing on the preceding material, the concluding chapter considers the case for renaturalising the law in this area, and the implications of following this path.

Jan Klabbers, Disagreement Reduced to Writing: Rethinking the Law of TreatiesThe law of treaties, embodied in the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, is in a state of disarray, with several key topics having been returned – without much success - for further study to the International Law Commission, and several other well-documented issues relating to the Convention’s application. The present contribution aims to explain why the Convention is in disarray, and how state practice and judicial practice aim to overcome this, leading to a slow re-thinking of the law of treaties.Stephan Hobe, Perspectives for Space Law in the Twenty-First CenturyThe legal order for human activities in outer space has been written in the 1960ies and 1970ies. However, in view of numerous new commercial space activities, so called New Space, the question is at stake whether this legal order is still sufficient. The author denies this question by criticizing that the current legal order is too liberal in character, putting too little emphasis on the limitation of freedoms, e.g. for the preservation of the environment. He designs a framework for a new international legal order which, by limiting some freedoms for the preservation of the environment of outer space and the celestial bodies for future use, still guarantees progress and autonomy.

Le présent Cours général s’efforce de mettre en évidence la centralité de la question de la normativité dans le champ juridique international. L’approche par le biais du concept de polycentrisme a pour but de montrer le rôle déterminant de la source de la norme et du processus de son avènement. C’est seulement de cette manière qu’il nous parait possible de comprendre et d’expliquer, d’une part, l’éclatement des normes et des institutions, d’autre part, la dialectique des valeurs communes qui permettent à la communauté internationale d’exister et des intérêts nationaux qui pèsent sur le processus normatif international, y compris sur la réalisation de la règle internationale. La conflictualité normative et la concurrence jurisprudentielle ne peuvent s’expliquer vraiment qu’à l’aune d’une telle approche. Le cours est organisé en deux grandes parties : la première traite du polycentrisme et la production de la règle internationale, la seconde aborde l’expansion et la réalisation du droit international à la lumière du polycentrisme normatif.

Massimo V. Benedettelli, Power(s) in International Arbitration, Balancing Party Autonomy and State Sovereignty Through Arbitral AuthorityInternational arbitration can be viewed as a power game among different actors, where the interest of business in self-regulation intersects and potentially clashes with the interest of States in protecting unwaivable principles of adjudication and policies pursued in the governance of national markets. In a world of fragmented normativity, however, the ensuing need to balance party autonomy and State sovereignty may find different answers depending on the regimes applicable from time to time in light of the links a dispute has with different legal systems. In fact, since powers are granted by law which determines their function, scope, and effects, in cross-border situations their regulation necessarily stems from a variety of non-homogeneous sources of international law, State law, and possibly instruments of a-national rules of law. If arbitration actors wish to make an educated use of their powers, these sources and the relevant legal systems must be identified. This may be necessary in view of their coordination, which raises different problems depending on whether the power to prescribe, the power to adjudicate or the power to enforce are at hand. Arbitral tribunals may deal with them on a more rational basis if guided by certain general principles embedded in their mandate (taking private autonomy seriously, safeguarding the effet utile of their activity, considering the parties’ legitimate expectations) and if they use private international law techniques. Identifying the legal systems of reference in a given case may also lead to detect forum and law shopping opportunities, which parties can self-servingly exploit in view of regulatory arbitrages, and States can contrast when leading to the elusion of mandatory regimes. At the epicentre of this tension, arbitral tribunals could find inspiration for managing it by looking at how the European Union allocates normative and adjudicatory powers in three areas of legal intercourse where private and public interests easily overlap and conflict (companies, financial markets, and insolvencies). Leveraging their authority to virtuously combine forum and law shopping with the safeguard of State sovereign prerogatives, arbitral tribunals would enhance the legitimacy of international arbitration.

Bhupinder S. Chimni, International Law and Global Justice: The Imperative of Climate JusticeThe lecture explores the relationship between “international law and global justice”. It first turns to the question of legitimacy of international laws which has in recent decades been actively debated in the disciplinary literature. The lecture inter alia contends that since the concepts of “legitimacy” and “justice” raise analogous issues, the debate anticipated the turn to the subject of global justice. The lecture then addresses the significant epistemic objections advanced against establishing a thick relationship between international law and the goal of global justice. The analytical and practical advantages of positing a positive linkage between international law and global justice are briefly noted thereafter. The lecture goes on to exemplify these understandings arguing that the pursuit of “climate justice” is critical to addressing the problem of global warming. It identifies in this regard the central elements of the concept of “climate justice” and touches on some aspects of the existing climate debate, including the principal cause of the climate crisis, the need for a radical response, and the proposed use of carbon border adjustment mechanisms by Global North nations. The lecture goes on to note that a just climate and global order calls for among other things structural reforms in the workings of global capitalism. It eventually turns to the question of agency and speaks of the possible social and political forces and actors that can promote the realization of justice in the global legal order. The lecture concludes with some final remarks.Mónica Pinto, Le droit international au temps de la mondialisation. Contextes, réseaux, pratiques. Cours général de droit internationalAux temps de la mondialisation les interactions ont augmenté, la participation dans les activités internationales a connu un élan formidable par le nombre d’acteurs aussi bien que par la formation de réseaux. Ce cours général se propose de considérer qui, comment et par quels moyens est fait le droit international aux temps de la mondialisation. Il met en relief les contextes ainsi que les réseaux de participation et d’élaboration du droit international. La mondialisation montre également une tendance à la légalité et à la judiciarisation des conflits. Le cours vise la formation et l’application du droit international par les régimes des droits humains et des normes internationales du travail, ainsi que le règlement de différends par les régimes du commerce international et des investissements étrangers. Les réseaux et pratiques de juridictions conduisent à passer revue à l’emploi de la force, les droits humains, les entreprises transnationales, l’environnement et l’intelligence artificielle.