The Interpretation of Acts and Rules in Public International Law
There are frequent claims that the
international legal regulation of international law is uncertain, vague,
ambiguous, or indeterminate, which does not support the stability, transparency,
or predictability of international legal relations. This monograph examines the
framework of interpretation in international law based on the premise of the
effectiveness and determinacy of international legal regulation, which is a
necessary pre-requisite for international law to be viewed as law.
This
study examines this problem for the first time since these questions were
addressed, and taken as the basic premises of the international legal analysis,
in the works of JL Brierly and Sir Hersch Lauterpacht. Addressing the different
aspects of the effectiveness of legal regulation, this monograph explores the
structural limits on, and threshold of, legal regulation, and the relationship
between the established legal regulation and non-law. Once the limits of legal
regulation are ascertained, the analysis proceeds to study the legal framework
of interpretation that serves the maintenance and preservation of the object and
intendment of the existing legal regulation.
The final indispensable
stage of analysis is the interpretation of those treaty provisions that embody
the indeterminate conditions of non-law. Given that the generalist element of
international legal doctrine has been virtually silent on the problem and
implications of the effectiveness and determinacy of international legal
regulation, this study examines the material accumulated in doctrine and
practice for the past several decades, including the relevant jurisprudence of
all major international tribunals
