The Legal Institutions: Laying Down the International Law

Abstract

International society, like other societies, has needed to develop rules to govern behaviour among its members, and judicial machinery for interpreting and developing these rules. In international society both legal and political systems are much less developed than those which operate domestically. There is no direct relationship between the two: international law is not made by the political bodies of the UN, as domestic law is made by domestic parliaments. On the contrary, law comes first. International law of a kind existed, in the custom of nations, long before the UN or any other international organisation. Today such bodies often ask the courts to lay down the law, for example requesting advisory opinions from the International Court, even asking it for a ruling on a highly political issue such as Namibia or the law of the sea or American mining of Nicaraguan harbours, on the basis of the law already laid down. The Assembly’s own resolutions on the other hand are not accepted as representing law. Thus law, as in primitive societies (and the international system is still a primitive society) is at present largely independent of political decision.