Demystifying Treaty Interpretation doesn’t just tell you how treaties are commonly interpreted. It helps you understand the process of treaty interpretation and its outcomes. The idea that rules of treaty interpretation can guide us to the meaning of treaty provisions, in a simple and straightforward manner, is a myth to be dispelled. This book aims to capture some of the complex and nuanced processes involved in treaty interpretation. It spurs further reflection about how interpretation takes place against the background of concepts, categories, and insights from other disciplines. A useful tool for scholars, practitioners, and researchers engaging with treaty interpretation at all levels, the book aims to enhance the reader’s knowledge and mastery of the interpretive process in all its elements, with a view to making them more skilled and effective players in the game of interpretation.

The International Law Commission has described the operation of the VCLT rule of interpretation as a ‘crucible’, whereby it is the combination of the interpretative principles contained in the VCLT rule that in each case yields the meaning of treaty provisions. Taking that view as its starting point, Chapter 4 points out that different interpretative VCLT principles may be assigned different weights in different cases, depending on the drafters’ constructed intention followed by the adjudicator in each case. The underlying idea, therefore, is that all these interpretative principles must hang together well and must be combined in a way that makes sense in the context of each case. This is a sign that considerations of coherence are apposite in the operation of the VCLT rule, acting as reasons that justify the above combination in each case and ultimately account for the outcome’s persuasiveness. In the process, the chapter identifies two key coherence-related processes: framing and normative contextualisation

Jean’s Roman de la Rose is characterised by its intense interest in language, signification, and representation. Several elements of Jean’s linguistic speculation resonate with academic debates among contemporary grammarians and logicians at the University of Paris. The following developments appear to have had a particularly important impact upon Jean’s poem: the rapid rise of modistic grammar in the late 1260s; theories of “improper” expression; debates over the nature and stability of imposition; and the related debate over the problem of “empty reference”. Jean’s reflection on language, metaphor, and reference bears a striking affinity to the theories of signification formulated by intentionalist grammarians, particularly the controversial Roger Bacon. Following Bacon, Jean directly critiques a number of arguments advanced by the first-generation modistae or speculative grammarians, and finally reveals the basic premises of modistic grammar as a whole to be untenable. Elaborating the suggestions of intentionalist grammarians, Jean emphasises the contextual, fluctuating nature of language: signification itself is revealed to be a fundamentally interpretive, inferential process that eludes regulation. I suggest that rather than simply adopting Baconian ideas about language and signification, Jean employs the Rose as a testing ground to explore the extreme consequences and implications of Bacon’s unusual language theory.