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Before I identify some useful sources of information on the web, it may be useful to explain what Public International Law ("PIL") is. It is not "international law" as the term is commonly understood. That term is wide enough to include all legal matters which involve more than one jurisdiction. It would thus include private international law (the rules whereby disputes which have links with more than one jurisdiction are considered), commercial litigation (most cases before the English Commercial Court having at least one foreign party), arbitrations and matters arising out of the European Union legal regime and the European Convention on Human Rights.
However PIL is the legal regime which governs its subjects, namely states, the entities of states (including ministries, state corporations), diplomats, and the more recent creations of states, namely international organisations (such as IMF, World Bank and WTO).
PIL is not a new phenomenon. As society developed, kingdoms emerged and the concept of sovereignty was born, i.e. autonomy for a ruler to deal with their territory and their subjects as they wished, without interference from other sovereigns who recognised them.
In the early 20th Century, the nation state gained increasing importance and
sovereignty and then, after the World War, the UN Charter was created to
promote social, legal and economic objectives in the interest of mankind as a
whole. Even during the Cold War, there were developments in the field of PIL.
In the economic context alone, many resolutions were passed by the General
Assembly of the United Nations, and treaties were signed on matters relating
to economic issues such as international trade (GATT), dispute resolution
through arbitration (UNCITRAL rules), as well as the creation of bodies such as
ICSID and MIGA to promote foreign investment in member states of the UN.
There are of course many fora within which PIL issues are dealt with almost
exclusively. These include the International Court of Justice ("ICJ") in the Hague
which deals with disputes between states which have consented
to its jurisdiction, as well as matters concerning UN organisations and treaty
based organisations where the ICJ has jurisdiction conferred upon it.
(For a description of the jurisdiction of the court, see
here.)
There are also many tribunals sitting at present all over the world dealing with PIL issues. They could be ad hoc commercial arbitrations (which are dealt with by the parties agreement and are often confidential), or treaty based bodies such as the WTO Dispute Panel, Iran-US Claims Tribunal, and the Law of the Sea Tribunal. A very recent development has been the creation of tribunals by the United Nations Security Council by means of mandatory resolutions, which are binding on all member states. These include the War Crimes Tribunals for Former Yugoslavia and Rwanda ("ICTFY" and "ICTR" respectively), as well as the UN-Iraq Compensation Commission.
Even more recently, in July 1998, 120 states (out of 189 member states of the UN) adopted the Statute of the Permanent International Criminal Court ("ICC"). The Statute of that Court comes into effect on 1st July 2002 and has been described as the most important development in PIL since the creation of the UN.
Treaty law is essentially the product of an agreement entered into between sovereign states. The best (but not precise) analogy of a treaty is with a contract.
When the SC acts pursuant to Chapter VII of the UN Charter without any dissenting vote of a permanent member, it can create binding obligations for all member states of the UN (see Article 25 of the UN Charter).
CIL is law which is the product of consensus amongst the community of nations. It is the embodiment of state practice which has acquired, through usage and acceptance, the hallmark of law. That is, that states regard it as binding in their dealings with other subjects of PIL. It can sometimes be difficult to identify but as and when it can be clearly identified, our Courts will give effect to it as part of the law of the land (see the speech of Lord Lloyd in the Pinochet case [2000] 1 AC at page 90E).
PIL impacts upon an increasing range of issues. Plainly it needs to be considered when a state or its entities or officials are the subject of legal proceedings before the English Courts. This can be the case in both the civil and criminal context, as illustrated by the recent House of Lords cases of Pinochet (No. 3) [1999] 2 WLR 827 and Kuwait Air Corporation (presently awaiting the decision of the House of Lords). In any case which involves an issue arising from a treaty, PIL may be relevant, such as in asylum and immigration cases (see for example the case of Adan (19/12/00) in the House of Lords). Accordingly, it would be imprudent to say the least to assume that an issue of PIL does not arise in a particular case.
A simple check-list in this regard should include the following:
If the answer to any one of these questions is in the affirmative, then you are going to have to start your searches! You may want to begin with a basic textbook (of which there are many). Once you have identified the core issues, you have a wide array of materials available on the web. I shall list some of the most important web-sites below under 6 headings. All of the sites (apart from the journals) offer free access because they are established by organisations which are almost exclusively funded by states as opposed to commercial organisations. They are all fairly easy to use and many have links to other sites
United Nations : www.un.org
UN High Commissioner for Refugees: www.unhcr.ch
UN Human Rights High Commissioner: www.unhchr.ch
International Committee of the Red Cross: www.icrc.org
NATO: www.nato.int
Org. for Security & Co-operation in Europe: www.osce.org
European Union: www.europa.eu.int
Council of Europe: www.coe.int
Organisation of American States: www.oas.org
Organisation of African Unity: www.oau-oua.org
League of Arab States: www.leagueforarabstates.org
Association of South East Asian Nations: www.asean.or.id
South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC): www.saarc-sec.org
Non-Aligned Movement: www.nam.gov.za/nam.htm
Commonwealth Secretariat: www.thecommonwealth.org
World Trade Organisation: www.wto.org
WIPO - World Intellectual Property Org.: www.wipo.int
EBRD (European Bank for Reconstruction and Development): www.ebrd.com
IMF: www.imf.org
World Bank Group: www.worldbank.org
Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation: www.apecsec.org.sg
ICJ: www.icj-cij.org
ECJ: www.curia.eu.int
ECHR: www.echr.coe.int
ICTY: www.un.org/icty/index.html
ICTR: www.ictr.org
ICC: www.un.org/icc
International Tribunal of the law of the sea: www.itlos.org
Royal Institute of International Affairs: www.riia.org
Max Planck Institute of Comparative Public and International Law: www.virtual-institute.de/eindex.cfm
University of Minnesota human rights library: www.umn.edu/humanrts
Project on international courts, tribunals: www.pict-picti.org
Journals on International Law.
European Journal of International Law: www.ejil.org
American Journal of International Law: www.asil.org/Abtajo.htm
Khawar Qureshi is Treasury Counsel and a Visiting Lecturer in International Law at King's College London. He practises in Commercial and Public International Law at Serle Court, Lincoln's Inn and has advised and appeared for various governments. He is chairman of the Bar Council PIL sub-committee. He recently delivered a paper "International Law before the English Courts" which can be obtained from him.
E-mail: kmqureshi@aol.com.
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