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Which Future for the Scholarly Concept of Soft International Law? Editors’ Introductory Remarks

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 May 2012

JEAN D'ASPREMONT  and
TANJA AALBERTS
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Extract

Engaging with a mundane topic like the softness of international law may certainly look surprising to the readership of a journal known for its avowed and constant quest for an intellectually and conceptually rigorous ‘off-Broadway’ scholarship. Why would a journal that tries to establish itself as a leading alternative voice in the field replay a comedy so often staged in mainstream scholarship? It is with the full awareness of such an anticipated feeling of déjà vu that the editors of the Leiden Journal of International Law have decided to open the ensuing pages to an oft-debated topic with the ambition of evaluating the possibility of transcending the traditional pitched battle between opponents and advocates of soft law. It is well known that, after the juvenile success of the concept1 and its embrace by a great number of international scholars, soft law became the object of severe criticisms, resulting in a chasm in the international legal scholarship. Indeed, the debate about soft law came to literally split authors into two camps, firmly pitted against one another. On the one hand, there are the advocates of the notion for whom the binary nature of law is incapable of explaining the complexity of the international exercise of public authority in a pluralized world2 or who see soft law as an instrument of (programming of the) development of hard law.3 These apostles of the notion of soft law are opposed by those who see the notion as redundant because it turns into either hard law or not law at all,4 it is self-serving for the profession,5 it is dangerously deformalizing our instruments of law ascertainment,6 or it is weakening the general authority of law.7 The fierce character of that confrontation originates in soft law's being intrinsically intertwined with one's core and inner understanding of (international) law, thereby making these discrepancies seem irreconcilable.

Type
SYMPOSIUM ON SOFT LAW
Information
Leiden Journal of International Law , Volume 25 , Issue 2 , June 2012 , pp. 309 - 312
Copyright
Copyright © Foundation of the Leiden Journal of International Law 2012

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References

1 Many seem to trace back the term ‘soft law’ to Lord McNair, even though it is not entirely definite that Lord McNair contemplated anything like a soft negotium or a soft instrumentum when he used that term. Indeed, Jennings, as a former student of McNair, explains that McNair was using the distinction between soft law and hard law as synonymous with the distinction between lex lata and lex ferenda. See ‘An International Lawyer Takes Stock’, (1990) 39 ICLQ 513, at 516.

2 For some famous support for the idea of normative continuum, see Baxter, R., ‘International Law and Her Infinite Variety’, (1980) 29 ICLQ 4CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 549, 563; Schachter, O., ‘The Twilight Existence of Nonbinding international Agreements’, (1977) 71 AJIL 2CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 296; Boyle, A. E., ‘Some Reflections on the Relationship of Treaties and Soft Law’, (1999) 48 ICLQ 4CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 901, 913; Chinkin, C., ‘The Challenge of Soft Law: Development and Change in International Law’, (1989) 38 ICLQ 4CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 850, 866. Pellet, A., ‘Complementarity of International Treaty Law, Customary Law and Non-Contractual Law-Making’, in Wolfrum, R. and Röben, V. (eds.), Developments of International Law in Treaty Making (2005), 409, at 415Google Scholar; A. Boyle and C. Chinkin, The Making of International Law (2007), 211; V. Lowe, International Law (2007), 96. Guzman, A. T., ‘The Design of International Agreements’, (2005) 16 EJIL 579CrossRefGoogle Scholar; R. Ida, ‘Formation des normes internationales dans un monde en mutation: Critique de la notion de Soft Law’, Mélanges en hommage à Michel Virally (1991), 336; M. Virally, ‘La distinction entre textes internationaux de portée juridique et textes internationaux dépourvus de portée juridique: Rapport provisoire à l'Institut de droit international’, (1983) 60-I AIDI 244; Elias, O. and Lim, C., ‘“General Principles of Law”, “Soft” Law and the Identification of International Law’, (1997) 28 NYIL 45CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 For an avowed programmatic use of soft law and customary international law, see Dupuy, R.-J., ‘Droit déclaratoire et droit programmatoire de la coutume sauvage a la “soft law”’, in Société française pour le droit international (ed.), L’élaboration du droit international public, Colloque de Toulouse (1975), 132Google Scholar; see also A. Pellet, ‘Complementarity of International Treaty Law, Customary Law and Non-Contractual Law-Making’, in Wolfrum and Röben, supra note 2, at 415; Fastenrath, U., ‘Relative Normativity in International Law’, (1993) 4 EJIL 305CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 324; see also Sindico, F., ‘Soft Law and the Elusive Quest for Sustainable Global Governance’, (2006) 19 LJIL 3CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 829, 836.

4 Klabbers, J., ‘The Redundancy of Soft Law’, (1996) 65 NJIL 173Google Scholar, at 180; see also J. Klabbers, The Concept of Treaty in International Law (1996), 158.

5 d'Aspremont, J., ‘Softness in International Law: A Self-Serving Quest for New Legal Materials’, (2008/5) 19 EJIL 1075CrossRefGoogle Scholar (see the reaction of Tony d'Amato, in (2009) 20 EJIL).

6 J. d'Aspremont, Formalism and the Sources of International Law; see also d'Aspremont, J., ‘The Politics of Deformalization in International Law’, (2011) 3 Goettingen Journal of International Law 503Google Scholar.

7 See the Report of M. Virally to the Institut de droit international, supra note 2; see also G. Abi-Saab, ‘Cours général de droit international public’, Collected Course, Vol. 207 (1987), 209.

8 For the original literature on non-state actors as norm entrepreneurs, see M. E. Keck and K. Sikkink, Activists beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics (1998).