The exercise of lawmaking powers by international organisations is mostly discussed in the context of the secondary law of the EU and Chapter VII Resolutions of the Security Council. In this context, it is frequently overlooked that the exercise of regulatory authority by international entities has an established tradition in one field of international practice, namely international territorial administration.

International administrations have exercised a broad range of lawmaking powers, including executive and legislative authority throughout the twentieth century. This phenomenon deserves attention from a legal perspective, because it deviates from the traditional structures of the international legal system. International administrations may adopt regulatory acts which are binding and directly applicable to both the internal legal order of the organisation which created them, and to the legal order of the territory which is placed under international control. This direct penetration of such legal acts into the domestic legal system of territory under administration (“direct applicability”) is innovative in a dual sense. It breaks with the conception that the regulatory powers of international organisations apply exclusively within the confines of their own legal order, namely vis-à-vis their own organs and member states. Moreover, it deviates from the classical dualist tradition according to which international regulatory acts require domestic implementation, in order to be directly applicable in the domestic realm.

This form of international lawmaking has its origins in the era of the League of Nations.