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Sources of international law


International law is the name of a body of rules which regulate the conduct of the States in their intercourse with one another.Sources of international law include treaties, international customs, general principles of law as recognized by civilized nations, the decisions of national and lower courts, and scholarly writings. They are the materials and processes out of which the rules and principles regulating the international community are developed. They have been influenced by a range of political and legal theories.

The sources of international law can be found in Article 38.1 of the Statute.

This portfolio of sources was extracted from Article 38 of the original world court's constitutive statute.

Article 38 (1) of the Statute of the International Court of Justice is generally recognized as a definitive statement of the sources of international law. It requires the Court to apply, among other things, (a) international conventions, whether general or particular, establishing rules expressly recognized by the contesting states; (b) international custom, as evidence of a general practice accepted as law; (c) the general principles of law recognized by civilized nations; (d) subject to the provisions of Article 59, judicial decisions and the teachings of the most highly qualified publicists of the various nations, as subsidiary means for the determination of rules of law.[1]

During the 19th century, it was recognised by legal positivists that a sovereign could limit its authority to act by consenting to an agreement according to the principle pacta sunt servanda. This consensual view of international law was reflected in the 1920 Statute of the Permanent Court of International Justice, and was later preserved in Article 38(1) of the 1946 Statute of the International Court of Justice.


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