Collected Courses of The Hague Academy of International Law - Recueil des cours – serie

The Academy is an institution for the study and teaching of public and private international law and related subjects. Its purpose is to encourage a thorough and impartial examination of the problems arising from international relations in the field of law. The courses deal with the theoretical and practical aspects of the subject, including legislation and case law. All courses at the Academy are, in principle, published in the language in which they were delivered in the Collected Courses of the Hague Academy of International Law. This volume contains:- Reform, but not Revolution. General Course on Private International Law, by Peter M. NORTH - Questions de droit international privé et dommages catastrophiques, par Tito BALLARINO.

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.