Monday, August 20, 2012

What is actor? What is State? What is sources of International law?


1). What is state? In term of Actors
v  What is actor? Actors are all legal system that must comply with the rule of that system or face some from of sanction. In international law actors are simply the individuals and collective entities such as state and international organizations, which make behavioral choices, whether lawful or unlawful.  Actors shall be process rights and duties in its manner, enjoys legal personality, and can be the object or subject of international law.
v  What is state? States refer to the nation. State shall be having sovereignty, population, territory, and independence. State shall have right and duties such as:
-          To obey treaties and international law in general
-          To compensate other states and their citizens in case of material harms
-          To protect foreign nationals and their property and treat them as well as their own citizen without regarding matter of voting an holding political office
-          To self-preservation include self-defense
-          To enjoy a right to legal equality and sovereign independence including control over their domestic affairs
-          To recognize and participate in diplomatic intercourse including joining international organizations
-          To sue other states in the ICJ and other course if they have ratified the treaty creating their countries
-          Not intervene the other state affairs or attack them by military
-          Not allow their territory to be used to harm other countries that may cause pollution to reach another territory
What is state in term of actor? A state is a sovereign actor with a central government that rule over a permanent population and territory, protects, and prevents that population, government, and independence in international policies, process right and duties in it manner as above, What is State, then enjoy legal personality such as carries out diplomatic intercourse, or exchange the ambassadors…etc. specially the can be the Subject or Object of international law. The object of international law: the actors receive the effect of international law including benefits and sanctions, an official order, such as the stopping of trade, which is taken against a country in order to make it obey international law. The subject of international law shall have duties and rights including capacity to appear before a penal of arbiter or international court.
      Example: USA and Cambodia, UAS is the Subject because they provide the Exporters to develop Cambodia, and Cambodia is the Object because they receive the Exporters from USA by any international organization or any NGO.

2). What is the Subject of international law?
A Subject of international law also called an international legal person or actors, is a body or entity recognized or accepted as being capable of exercising international right and duties. There are two define of subject of international law, namely, States and international organization.
v  States and international organizations are the main subject of international law which has all capacities such as legal personality, their obligation and rights need not be the same as a state.
     Example: ICJ has recognize some international organizations as proper subject of international law where are they
-          Are a permanent association of state, with lawful objective
-          Has distinct legal powers and purpose from the member states
-          Can exercise powers internationally, not only within a domestic system
In this types of international organization are the EU, UN, WHO…etc. Like The International Committee of the Red Cross, base Switzerland, has a unique status in international law as  inter-governmental organization as guardian of the Geneva Conventions of 1949 for the protection of victims of armed conflict. It is neither an international organization nor non-governmental organization, but has a special legal stats under treaty law by virtue of important functions in upholding legal protections i situation of armed conflict.

3). What is the sources of International law of ICJ?
It is generally accepted that Article 38 of the Statute of the International Court of Justice is a complete statement of the sources of international law. Article 38 describes the following four sources:
1.                   international conventions and treaties that establish rules that States expressly recognize;
2.                  international custom as evidence of general practice(s) accepted by States as law;
3.                  general principles of law; and
4.                  Judicial decisions and the teachings of highly qualified publicists of various nations
v  International conventions and treaty:
Treaties, or international conventions, can be bilateral (between two States) or multilateral (between many States). A treaty is a written legal document (instrument) agreed between States and governed by international law. It may be in the form of a single instrument, or two or more related instruments. Although often used interchangeably, the term ‘convention’ is usually reserved for multilateral agreements, such as The Hague, Geneva, and Vienna Conventions. Treaties can also be called agreements, protocols, or instruments. So the processes for concluding a treaty generally include some steps such as: adoption, signature, ratification, accession, entry into force, treat are binding, and reservations to treaties.
v  International Custom
Customary international law describes general practices accepted as law by States. The development of customary international law is an ongoing process, making it more flexible than law contained in treaties. The task of identifying or describing customary international law, involves consideration of the following elements:
-           the degree of consistency and uniformity of the practice;
-          the generality and duration of the practice;
-          the interests of specially affected States; and
-          The degree to which the States who adopt the practice do so from recognition that the practice is required by, or consistent with prevailing international law,
 The shorthand for the belief that the practices required by law are opinio juris et necessitates, a Latin phrase, in English is a legal rule that is necessary to obey. A brief definition is that a customary rule is a general practices accept as law, it still importance today especially in the area of state duties and rights, state immunity, and state succession.
     Example: Jus Cogens: The principles of international law, which included the prohibition of slavery and torture, genocide, the use of armed forced, and piracy on the high sea, and more positively, the principle of racial non-discrimination, and the right to self-determination, we called it compelling law and referred to so-called peremptory norms of general international law. Not every principle of international has the status of Jus Congens. To being understand how compelling principle or rules of international law are and how they become so, it is importance to make sense of how international law is found.
v  General Principle of Law
v  Another source of international law is ‘general principles of law’. The ICJ is directed to consider ‘the general principles of law recognized by civilized nations’ in its decision making: see Statute of the International Court of Justice, Article 38(1)(c).
What are ‘general principles of law’? Does it mean that the ICJ should search for what the legal systems of the world have in common and apply those principles? Or rather, should the ICJ use methods and doctrines of domestic legal decision making to the extent that they are useful in addressing the questions before the Court, to develop an international judicial method? The preferable view seems to be that international tribunals use domestic law selectively where situations are comparable to make the administration of international law work.8
     Another good example is the use by the ICJ of the principles of estoppel or acquiescence to the relations between States. ‘Estoppel’ is a doctrine that comes from an equitable tradition in legal reasoning that concerns itself with fairness, conscionability and justice. Estoppel works like this. ‘State A’ acts or says something to encourage ‘State Z’ to believe in a particular legal or factual situation. State Z relies on what State A did or said. Now State A wants to go back on its word or its representation and State Z will suffer as a result. State Z can estop State A from changing it tune.
v  Judicial ad decisions and writing of publicists
The Statute of the International Court of Justice says that the Court shall apply judicial decisions and the teachings of the most highly qualified publicists as subsidiary means for the determination of rules of law’: Article 38(1)(d). Traditionally, judicial decisions and writing of publicists do not themselves form a source of international law, but help the Court to identify the scope of customary law, proper interpretation of a treaty, or existence of general principles. According to a leading academic, the idea of a hierarchy of sources of international law with judicial decisions and academics at the bottom is misplaced.11 The International Court of Justice (ICJ) is the main court of the UN and its decisions identify and articulate international law rules based on treaty, custom, general principles of law, judicial decisions of international and national courts and tribunals, and the writings of jurists.
-          Judicial decisions
1.      The decisions of the ICJ have no binding force, except for between the parties in a particular case: Statute of the ICJ, Article 59. While this means that there is no formal and consistent system of binding precedent, the ICJ does have regard to its previous decisions and advisory opinions and to the law that it has applied in previous cases. It is also concerned to ensure procedural consistency.
2.      Some ICJ decisions have been influential in developing new rules of international law. For example the Reparations case, which established the legal personality of the UN;12 the Nuclear Tests cases, which concerned the circumstances in which a unilateral declaration is binding on the State that made it;13 and the Anglo- Norwegian Fisheries case concerning how the territorial sea is to be measured along a deeply indented coastline or coastal fringe of islands
3.      Decisions of other bodies, including arbitration panels, specialist tribunals and regional courts such as the European Court of Justice and the European Court of Human Rights, assist in application of particular aspects of the law. Decisions of domestic courts, which interpret rules of international law can provide guidance as to the law, and provide evidence of the practice of that State in the development of customary international law.
-          Writing of Publicists and jurists
The writings of publicists and jurists (that is, academics of international public law) are important in the ongoing refinement and development of international law. They inform the shape of legal advice given to governments and therefore inform State practice; they are used in pleadings and in argument before the ICJ by States.
Other sources treated similarly to the writings of eminent publicists, and at least as authoritative15 are:
-                       the reports, research and draft articles produced by the International Law Commission (a subsidiary organ of the UN General Assembly responsible for the progressive development and codification of international law: UN Charter, Article 13(1)(a));
-                       resolutions and working papers of expert bodies
-                      the workings of secretariats providing the legal basis for conferences and working groups such as theHague Codification Conference.

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