EJIL: Talk!

Blog of the European Journal of International Law

Articles posted by Jaye Ellis

Comparative Law and the Ad Hoc Tribunals: A Rejoinder to Aldo Zammit Borda

Published on June 15, 2012 Author: Jaye Ellis

Jaye Ellis is Associate Professor and Associate Dean, Faculty of Law, McGill University, Canada. Her article General Principles and Comparative Law was published in (2011) 22 (4) EJIL 949-971

In his EJIL:Talk! post commenting on my recent EJIL article, Aldo Zammit Borda begins with reference to an approach to the identification of general principles of international law that is quite different from the one I described as being the current dominant approach, and rather similar to the approach that I propose in my paper. Central to my argument is that comparative law could help international judges understand general principles as an opportunity to learn from municipal legal systems, rather than as a means of transferring pieces of legal machinery from one system to another. The approach taken by Judge Shahabuddeen in Furundzija, and adopted by Aldo, seems compatible with the one I advance. I would propose the adoption of a more modest goal: rather than hoping to find ‘a common underlying sense of what is just in the circumstances’ as Judge Shahabuddeen would have it, I would suggest the identification of a reasonable, and reasonably just, solution to a legal problem. Nevertheless, Judge Shahabuddeen’s approach moves sharply away from a mechanical, or functional, approach to borrowing from municipal legal systems. I am less confident than Aldo regarding the extent to which this principle is reflected in what most international judges do, and what legal scholars say they ought to do, when it comes to general principles, though judges on international criminal tribunals are moving in interesting and promising directions.

I am not convinced that Aldo’s approach to comparative law provides appropriate guidance to international judges looking to learn from municipal law. Schmitthoff’s approach to comparative law, adopted by Aldo, is problematic in my view. I agree with Schmitthoff that comparative law is better described as a comparison among reactions of legal systems to a problem than as a comparison between legal rules and institutions, but I find that the second stage, the utilization of the results obtained, is question-begging. Read the rest of this entry…

Filed under: Comparative Law, EJIL Analysis, EJIL: Debate!, General Principles of International Law, International Tribunals, Sources of International Law

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General Principles and Comparative Law

Published on May 31, 2012 Author: Jaye Ellis

Jaye Ellis is Associate Professor and Associate Dean, Faculty of Law, McGill University, Canada. Her article General Principles and Comparative Law was published in (2011) 22 (4) EJIL 949-971

My article explores the source ‘general principles of international law’ from the point of view of comparative law scholarship. As international law’s agenda becomes wider and more ambitious, areas of overlap between international and municipal law become ever larger, and interactions between the two levels more numerous. It might seem reasonable to assume that general principles of law, a source which establishes an important point of contact between international and municipal law, would come into its own in such an environment. This has not been the case, however. One possible explanation is hesitation on the part of international judges to identify rules whose formal validity as rules of international law is rather tenuous. Another possible explanation is the highly unsatisfactory nature, both in theory and in practice, of the methodology currently applied to identify general principles of law. The debates at the international level regarding general principles map onto those at the municipal level concerning the ‘borrowing’ of rules from one legal system by another. It makes sense, therefore, to look into the controversies over ‘borrowing’ that play out in scholarship on comparative law, in order to gain some insights into the difficulties generated by the source general principles of law, as well as ways of alleviating these difficulties. I argue that particular attention ought to be paid to strands of comparative law scholarship which take issue with a functional approach – to put it starkly, an approach that treats legal rules as pieces that can be extracted from one machine and inserted into another – and which place emphasis on the processes through which legal systems can learn from one another.

Filed under: Comparative Law, EJIL Analysis, EJIL: Debate!, General Principles of International Law, International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, Sources of International Law

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