This contribution seeks to shed new light onto the classification of legal orders with respect to the domestic effect of international law. Traditional theory distinguishes between monist and dualist systems, those that accept the primacy of international law over domestic law, and those that do...

The paper examines the potential of customary international law to protect global public goods. In particular, it focuses on the question whether customary law can contribute to the mitigation of climate change. The analysis proceeds in the three steps. First, it will have a closer look at the...

Economic approaches are becoming increasingly prominent in international law. A few years ago, Jack Goldsmith and Eric Posner caused a great stir with their account of The Limits of International Law, in which they argued that international law did not have any effect on state conduct. This...

Rational choice approaches to customary international law have gained in prominence in recent years. Although becoming increasingly sophisticated, they are not able to explain all phenomena of customary international law. This contribution claims that there are two different types of unwritten...

It is often observed in the literature on customary international law that the identification practice of the International Court of Justice for customary norms deviates from the traditional definition of customary law in Art. 38 (1) lit. b of the ICJ Statute. However, while there are many...

While treaty norms only bind states that have explicitly consented to a treaty, the case is less clear with customary international law. According to the prevailing opinion in international law scholarship, states are not bound by a customary norm if they have persistently objected to the...

Rational choice approaches to customary international law have gained in prominence in recent years. Although becoming increasingly sophisticated, they are not able to explain all phenomena of customary international law. This contribution claims that there are two different types of unwritten...

In the early 1990s, after the fall of the Berlin wall, legal scholars initiated a debate on the existence of a right to democratic governance in international law. Many of the adherents to the democratic entitlement school seem to assume that democratization is a simple shift in the political...

It is often observed in the literature on customary international law that the identification practice of the International Court of Justice for customary norms deviates from the traditional definition of customary law in Art. 38 (1) lit. b of the ICJ Statute. However, while there are many...