We thank Alison MacDonald for her illuminating and extremely useful perspective on the developments in the approach of the British courts to adjudication based on international law. In many respects the changing attitude toward international law, headed by the House of Lords under the unmistakable leadership of Lord Bingham, has provided an example for other national courts (NCs) to follow, starting in 2004 with the so-called Belmarsh Detainees judgment, that stunning 8-1 majority declaration that found the detention of foreign suspected terrorists incompatible with the Human Rights Act. Such leadership is critical to change the status quo not only within a jurisdiction but also regionally and perhaps even globally (and no doubt, as MacDonald suggests, it facilitated a mutually reinforcing relationship between the House of Lords and the ECtHR).
Other useful observations of MacDonald’s that are worth highlighting include the reference to the Court of Appeal’s blend of interpretive biases as leading – as often is the case – to conceptual confusion (in this case between customary and conventional international law); the inclusion of the Divisional Court’s “bright line” rationale characterizing the division of responsibilities between domestic and international courts followed by a brief documentation of the principle’s growing impracticality and obsolescence, and the description of how NCs continue to emphasize the importance of continuity and their fealty to their traditional role even as they venture further and further into the international legal sphere. This is an excellent example of how low visibility, incremental change can achieve a great deal at relatively low political cost.
We thank Professor Akande for his thoughtful review of our main arguments presented in our recent EJIL essay. We reproduce a number of his points below and respond to each of them in turn. A fuller treatment of a number of the issues that Akande raises can be found in several of our recent publications in this area (see Benvenisti 2008, Benvenisti & Downs 2009, and Benvenisti & Downs forthcoming 2009). Read the rest of this entry…