Despite the theoretical and practical importance of the question of conflict between treaties, little has been written on the subject. This monograph fills this gap by providing a detailed analysis of the main issues. The book is divided into three parts. The first deals with the definition of conflict, causes of conflict, and different types of conflict. The second part examines different sources of international law in order to identify rules of international law relating to the resolution of conflicts. The third part addresses the actual process of resolving conflicts between treaties. After describing different stages of treaty conflict-resolution, it discusses some special principles advanced for resolving conflicts between certain types of treaties, namely, those relating to the protection of human rights, those concerning dispute settlement, and treaties dealing with private law issues.

This book adopts a 'trans-civilizational' perspective on the history and development of current West-centric international law.

In The Right to Food and the World Trade Organization’s Rules on Agriculture: Conflicting, Compatible, or Complementary?, Rhonda Ferguson explores the relationship between the human right to food and agricultural trade rules. She questions whether States can adhere to their obligations under both regimes simultaneously. These two regimes are frequently portrayed to be in tension with one another. The content and contours of the right to food under international human rights law and WTO rules on domestic supports, export subsidies, and market access are considered through the lens of norm conflict theories. The analysis is situated within the context of the debate surrounding the fragmentation of international law.

One of the most prominent and urgent problems in international governance is how the different branches and norms of international law interact and what to do in the event of conflict. With no single 'international legislator' and a multitude of states, international organisations and tribunals making and enforcing the law, the international legal system is decentralised. This leads to a wide variety of international norms, ranging from customary international law and general principles of law, to multilateral and bilateral treaties on trade, the environment, human rights, the law of the sea, etc. Pauwelyn provides a framework on how these different norms interact, focusing on the relationship between the law of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and other rules of international law. He also examines the hierarchy of norms within the WTO treaty. His recurring theme is how to marry trade and non-trade rules, or economic and non-economic objectives at the international level.

Treaty conflicts are not merely the contingent or inadvertent by-products of the increasing juridification of international relations. In several instances, states have deliberately created treaty conflicts in order to catalyse changes in multilateral regimes. Surabhi Ranganathan uses such conflicts as context to explore the role of international law, in legal thought and practice. Her examinations of the International Law Commission's work on treaties and of various scholars' proposals on institutional action, offer a fresh view of 'mainstream' legal thought. They locate, in a variety of writings, a common faith in international legal discourse, built on liberal and constructivist assumptions. Ranganathan's three rich studies of treaty conflict, relating to the areas of seabed mining, the International Criminal Court, and nuclear governance, furnish a textured account of the specific forms and practices that constitute such a legal discourse and permit a grounded understanding of the interactions that shape international law.

Addresses the most central debates in contemporary investment law and policy.

This book is a collection of essays dealing with issues of contemporary significance in the law of treaties. It neither purports nor aspires to provide a general overview of all aspects of the law of treaties, and it is by no means intended to be a comprehensive textbook. The discussion of the subjects selected in this book will shed some light on a number of areas of the contemporary law of treaties, and, consequently, on some important features of the international legal system at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The relevance of the rules governing the law of treaties for other central fields of international law continue to be the subject of frequent doctrinal discussion. In addition, some rapidly developing newer areas of public international law, which are regulated for the most part by treaties, have renewed the importance of some older problems, for example, the question of conflicts between treaties regulating the same subject-matter and the matter of treaty interpretation. One other important issue is the relevance of the emergence of new actors and factors, other than states, in the international legal order in general, and in the law of treaties in particular.

While treaties can be notoriously difficult to amend by formal means, they must nevertheless be adapted over time in order to remain useful. Herein lies the role of subsequent practice as a key tool for treaty change. Subsequent practice-a well-established means of treaty interpretation-sometimes diverges from the original treaty provision to such an extent that it can no longer be said to constitute an act of interpretation or application. Rather, it becomes, in effect, one of treaty modification. The modification of treaties by subsequent practice extends to all fields of international law, from the law of the sea, environmental law, and investment law, to human rights and humanitarian law. Such modifications can have significant practical consequences, from revising or creating new rights and obligations, to establishing new institutional mechanisms. Determining when and how treaty modification by subsequent practice occurs poses difficulty to legal scholars and dispute settlement bodies alike, and impacts States' expectations as to their treaty obligations. This significant yet underexplored process is the focus of this book. Modification of Treaties by Subsequent Practice proves that subsequent practice can-under carefully defined conditions that ensure strict accordance with the will of the treaty parties-alter, supplement, and terminate treaty provisions or even entire treaty frameworks. It can also generate customary law and fuel regime interaction. Ultimately, this book demonstrates the relevance and dynamism of the process of treaty modification by subsequent practice, emphasizing the need to deal with the issue head on, and explains-on a theoretical and practical level-how it can be identified and dealt with more consistently in the future. The book thus contributes to a deeper understanding of the process of treaty modification by subsequent practice and its continued role in striking the judicious balance between the stability of treaties on the one hand, and the organic evolution of the law on the other.