PHIL 2050 Lecture Notes - Lecture 42: International Criminal Court, Legal Realism, Martti Koskenniemi
21 Mar 2016
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Hart: international law does not need to be coercive to be binding. The rules of international law are distinguishable from morality. State law we can identify a clear hierarchy amongst the sources of law (canada: a number sources of law which are recognized by courts, police ,etc. : we have constitutional law, provincial statutes, municipal laws, court decisions which create precedents and bonds future courts) There is no basic rule providing general criteria of validity for the rules of international law, and that the rules which are in fact operative constitute not a system but a set of rules (c392) So, international law is more like a primitive legal order, where there are only primary, socially accepted rules governing behaviour, and no secondary rules which would constitute a legal system. Two supporting arguments: (i) a rule of recognition both identifies sources of law and ranks them.
