A Theory of Customary International Law

A State Preferences Account of Customary International Law Adjudication

The standard account today of customary international law (CIL) is that it arises from the widespread and consistent practice of states followed out of a sense of legal obligation. Although commonly recited, this account is plagued by evidentiary, normative, and conceptual difficulties, and it has been subjected to increasing criticism in recent years. This paper posits a different account of C...

The Formation of Customary Law

The Emerging Customary Law of Space

The Political Economy of “Aboriginal Customary Law”

Discussions about aboriginal-non-aboriginal relations in Canada have stressed the need to recognize “aboriginal customary law” in self-government arrangements. It is maintained that many aspects of “native law” differ radically from the legal systems that emerged in European countries, and so imposing Canadian conceptions of law on aboriginal communities is an obstacle to native self-determinat...

Manifest Intent and the Generation by Treaty of Customary Rules of International Law

I shall argue in this essay that the World Court used a method which might be called the rule of manifest intent in the North Sea Continental Shelf Cases, that this method differs from a more traditional approach found in the writings of publicists, and that this new method accords well with the growing need to objectify and place upon a scientific basis the methodology by which one may determi...