International Law in Domestic Courts

In October 2005, the Institute launched a lecture series on public international law and domestic courts. This series, proposed by the Head of the Institute's Public International Law Advisory Panel, Sir Michael Wood KCMG, will continue throughout 2006. This series encompasses one aspect of a broader issue - the relationship between international law and domestic (internal law) law, or - more specifically - the position of international law in domestic law (monoist/dualist and so forth). This lecture series sheds a modern light on this age-old discussion.

This is a large topic, especially if one considers the numerous domestic cases reported in the International Law Reports and even that, presumably, is far from complete. The academic literature on this topic is quite limited and even if one looks at a single jurisdiction, i.e. England and Wales, there is a great deal of recent material. One objective of this series has been to highlight and make more accessible the salient developments in this area.

A critical question addressed by the speakers is to consider what public international law has to say on this matter, for example, in treaties. Is this topic essentially one of domestic law, or at best of comparative law? In any case, it should increasingly be of the greatest interest to public international lawyers. Clive Parry used to tell his students that the most interesting questions lay at the intersection of domestic law and public international law.

The series includes such relatively recent developments in pubic international law as international human rights law (including refugee law), international criminal law, and binding decisions of the Security Council.

A separate but important angle is the contribution of domestic courts to the development of international law. Recent and highly controversial cases include the Pinochet cases (1 and 3).

This lecture series and the publication that will result from the papers presented will inform both specialists and non-specialists in the field of public international law - be they practitioners, judges, or teachers and will contribute to the knowledge and feel for this very unique area of the law.

Participants who have delivered papers in this series are:

  • Professor Colin Warbrick University of Durham
  • Dapo Akande, University of Oxford
  • The Honourable M Margaret McKeown, Judge of the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
  • Professor AndrĂ© Nollkaemper
  • Judge Allan Rosas European Court of Justice
  • Judge Luzius Wildhaber President European Court of Human Rights
  • Peter Carter QC