So when someone says international law, it means a lot more than just handling diplomatic cases, or dealing with a conflict between two companies based in different countries. In just one week, I have gone from thinking I had figured out my field to having to readjust my whole perspective on the matter.
When I started out, I was looking into some big names, like the United Nations, to help direct my research and guide my understanding. What I fortunately discovered was that because international law is only "enforced" by countries agreeing upon it through treaty or membership in an alliance the basis of international law is set based upon the Charter of the UN and many other documents like the Vienna Convention. This led me down a rabbit hole of treaty and charter agreements that fundamentally shifted how I view the court.
Prior to this my knowledge was mostly based in domestic courts, with precedent and the Constitution dictating a lot of how the court is run. Knowing a bit more about how international courts are set up has made me want to look more into these procedure's
outside of Robert's Rules and the style of US court systems, because it can be very different depending on the countries in question. It also leads me to believe that to better my understanding of international law I need to wash away a lot of my perspective as an American and be prepared for the differences in different courts.
Photo taken from the National Eye Institute.
There are 4 main sources that international courts use to maintain some order and to ensure consistency. Those sources being treaties, customary law, general principles of law, and judicial decisions. Treaties are the most concrete because in a ju
dicial conflict between two countries, that treaty is going to dictate a lot in that court in order to make sure that treaty stays intact. Customary law is very circumstantial, I have learned because it is mostly just "most countries agree" which is curious how that is useful if a certain nation doesn't follow that pattern of behaviour. General principles are a bit more concrete than customary law because they are just laws that most countries have codified and have therefore entered the court of international law. Judicial decisions/scholarly articles, are very rare to use because that means the first three sources have yielded no basis for which to provide a ruling to argue for, these usually take the form of decisions and precedent from a nation in question, however this can reduce consistency.
In the coming weeks I know I will need to dive further into these practices in order to finally get a firm understanding of international courts and how they contrast with what I know about US court.