Transcriber: Ahmed Abdelfattah Reviewer: Emma Gon
So I suppose the one, even once in a lifetime,
has questioned him or herself while studying
or being already familiar with what we call jus gentium.
That is the Latin name of international law with a lot of questions like,
Does it work? How efficient is it? Or is it a law actually and so on.
And I guess that sounds
quite natural and reasonable.
Since during my classes on international law that I deliver as a lecturer,
I received many such queries
and even attacks to the legal quality thereof.
And today I stand here to say I don’t share
the similar views for that contingent of people.
To start off, I would like you all to think out of the model
that many of us have already start to imagine and think of.
So what I am referring to is
the horizontality of the international system
where the law of nations operates.
So, perhaps during the lessons of state and law theory
or even constitutional law,
we learn that there are three main branches of government.
They are executive, legislative and judicial,
and these all have their respective bodies
with functions to be performed they are entrusted with.
So this all is about domestic jurisdiction, domestic law.
So what about the international law then? Do we have the same system?
So I guess the answer would be negative, so totally not.
So international law that is called upon to regulate
legal relationships between its subjects doesn’t fit to this system.
So there is no legislature.
So resolutions of the United Nations General Assembly
are not of a binding force.
There is no executive body as such.
So the United Nations Security Council,
which consists of five permanent member states.
So they are the US, UK, France,
Russian Federation and China.
So they have a veto power.
And sometimes these power constrains
some decisions to be made, to be approved.
And last but not least, there is no judicial system.
The International Court of Justice,
the principal judicial organ of the United Nations Organization,
can entertain the case between parties.
So they are the applicant from one side and the respondent from the other.
Once both parties have expressed their consent,
without which our court cannot render the case.
And this leads us to suppose that there is, of course,
a slight difference between domestic and international law.
While in societies, the authority is vertical,
so the system in question is of wise, worse nature.
It’s totally horizontal since states all of them are equal.
And what's more, they are sovereign
and there is no more superior authority about them.
So in domestic law, the law is about individuals.
The same we can’t say when we refer to international law,
where the law operates between states and not about them.
So that means that states are themselves who create
and themselves who decide to respect
or disrespect some international law norms.
Whereas there is legislative body that creates norms
in national domestic jurisdiction
where individuals there can only obey or disobey them.
We often tend to criticize the efficiency of international law,
especially on the background of global crisis
when international peace and security are endangered.
How about the national legal system then?
So we can witness myriads of headlines from newspapers
of the incidence of several violations
like murder, robbery, rape and so on.
And having that in mind sometimes
doesn’t question the efficiency of the national legal system
in the same way as we do that with international law.
So doesn’t that count?
The fact that there are some drawbacks in the system
by no means would mean its needlessness.
To put it simply, in other words, I would rather say
that the bigger system is the bigger the problems are.
So despite notorious stereotypes,
international law is well respected and severe violations are rare.
So international law offers us
a system of stability and predictability
International law is a common tool of communication
that we can refer to and speak in,
once discrepancies between states arise.
And that I would say really do matters.
It would be totally inaccurate to expect something excessive
that international law can’t provide or can’t offer or can’t deliver.
And I would like to conclude my speech by reminding the words
of the former secretary general of the United Nations Organization,
Mr. Dag Hammarskjöld.
So he once said that the United Nations
was not created to bring us to heaven,
but in order to save us from hell.
So in this sense, if I may,
I would like to attribute the same idea to international law.
Thank you. (Applause)