Table Of ContentIus Gentium: Comparative Perspectives on Law and Justice 57
Carlos Iván Fuentes
Normative
Plurality in
International
Law
A Theory of the Determination of
Applicable Rules
Ius Gentium: Comparative
Perspectives on Law and Justice
Volume 57
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á
Carlos Iv n Fuentes
Normative Plurality
in International Law
A Theory of the Determination
of Applicable Rules
123
Carlos IvánFuentes
Officeof LegalAffairs, United Nations
NewYork,NY
USA
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of the UnitedNations.
ISSN 1534-6781 ISSN 2214-9902 (electronic)
Ius Gentium: Comparative Perspectives onLawandJustice
ISBN978-3-319-43927-3 ISBN978-3-319-43929-7 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-43929-7
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A un tal Lucas
Foreword
This book by Carlos Iván Fuentes—like so many scholarly studies—is the
chronicle of a journey. It invites us to accompany the author from the initial
intuition that motivated the decision to inquire further, through the tribulations he
faced in his path, to the final destination in the form of a theory that provides a
suitableexplanationoftheinitial concerns.VerymuchlikeDante,whomidwayin
hislife’sjourneyfoundthatthepathwhichledarightwaslost,CarlosIvánFuentes
recounts in this book how he came to the realization that the classical theory of
sources did not provide him with a suitable framework to understand how the
international judge determines the rules applicable to the settlement of a dispute.
And very much like Dante, he tells us the story of how, in the vast emptiness in
whichhefoundhimself,AlfRossandhisScandinavianformoflegalrealismwould
become the Virgil who would guide his way towards a theory of normative
plurality.
As the starting point of this journey, Carlos Iván Fuentes chooses two con-
trastingdecisionsoftheInternationalCourtofJustice:one(theadvisoryopinionon
the Legality of the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons) in which a comprehensive
survey of relevant normative instruments still led the Court to the conclusion that
ultimatelytherewasnointernationallawapplicabletothematteratstake;theother
(thejudgmentonthemeritsoftheAhmadouSadioDiallocase)inwhichtheCourt
didnothesitatetoseeksystemicsupportforitsinterpretationofthelawapplicable
tothecaseinthejurisprudenceofvarioushumanrightsbodiesandregionalcourts.
Astrictrelianceonthetraditionaltheoryofsourcesofinternationallawastaughtin
our law schools—he finds—does not suffice to explain the divergence in the
approachesthattheCourtadoptedineachofthesecases.Andhisintuition,inspired
by the jurisprudence of the international law of human rights, is that our attention
should be shifted from the sources themselves to the decision-maker. Different
normativeinstruments—hetellsus—coexistinanunorderedspace,sothatmeaning
can be produced by the free interaction of those instruments around a given
problem. Decision-makers, therefore, cannot base their activity on a doctrine that
limits the possible sources of law, pre-establishing their relative weight and
vii
viii Foreword
relationship to each other. Instead (and this is where Alf Ross comes for the first
time to the rescue), our focus should be on the not objectified factors that pre-
condition the decision-makers’ understanding of what constitutes international law
in a given case.
Thus Carlos Iván Fuentes invites us to engage in the journey with a decon-
structionofthetheoryofsourcesfromahistoricalperspective.InhisfirstChapter,
he shows how, from the emergence of international law in the 1600s until the
present,scholarshavealwayshadrecoursetoanirreduciblenon-objectifiedelement
tocomplementtheirattemptstoclassifytherulesofinternationallaw.Fromdivine
or natural law in the classics of our discipline to the general principles of law,
principlesofjustice,juscogens orsoftlawinmorerecentconstructionsofthelaw
of nations, there has always been a variable in the equation, an external element
which did not fit an objective and ordered set of sources.
He then turns, in his second Chapter, to Article 38 of the Statute of the
International Court of Justice, which is nowadays often elevated as a paradigm
of the theory of sources in international law. He shows that this Article only
provides a general frame of reference, which fails to encompass the normative
phenomenon as a whole. Through the detailed review of how the International
CourtofJusticeidentifiedtheapplicablelawinthreedecisions,CarlosIvánFuentes
shows that the international judge has had resort to a “jurisprudence of incorpo-
ration” to frame recent developments of international law into the rigid parameters
of the list of sources found in Article 38.
This is when the initial intuition returns with the idea that the jurisprudence of
humanrightsbodiesmayprovideanewparadigmtounderstandthephenomenonof
normativity in international law. In his third chapter, Carlos Iván Fuentes shows
howthesehumanrights’bodieshaveexercisedlargerfreedomintheirrecoursetoa
vast array of instruments (resolutions, general comments, recommendations,
guidelines, etc.) to complement the meaning of international human rights con-
ventions,whichallowedthemtodevelopasetofinterpretativetoolsthatwasbetter
suited to advancing the protection of human rights in the face of changing cir-
cumstances of the international community. As such, they encourage us to liberate
ourselves from the strictures of the classical theory of sources to appreciate the
determination of the applicable rules of law in its whole dimension.
The theory of normative plurality that ensues is based on Alf Ross’s idea that
judicial decisions are at least partially determined by a set offree, not formulated,
not objectified factors spontaneously arising in the judge as the mouthpiece of the
community.InhisfinalChapter,CarlosIvánFuentesadjuststhetheorytotakeinto
account certain recent phenomena of international law: from the original focus on
the judicial function, he extends the idea to a broader range of institutions per-
forming advisory or quasi-judicial functions. Then, he further develops the theory,
identifying three guiding notions that assist decision-makers in determining the
norms that are relevant in a given case, namely: (1) specificity, i.e. the particular
tradition that guides decision-makers in determining what constitutes normative
information; (2) completeness, or the idea that every international situation is
capable of being determined as a matter of law; and (3) purpose, that is the
Foreword ix
decision-makers’understandingoftheirroleintheinternationalcommunity.These
notions allow him to shed light on the socio-psychological process by which
decision-makers arrive to their decision, thus bringing out the creative dimension
of the judicial or quasi-judicial function in the determination of the rules of law.
Thisbriefpersonallogofideasgatheredinmyownjourneythroughthisvolume
doesnotrenderjusticetothepagesthatfollow.Thetrueappealofreadingthisbook
liesinlettingtheauthorleadourwaythroughthetwistsandturnsofthetheoryand
practiceofinternationallaw.Whileourpathisgenerallyguidedbythecompassof
normativeplurality,thisstudyisactuallyanexplorationoftheinternationaljudicial
function as a whole. Carlos Iván Fuentes has a unique talent in describing with
simplicity and rich background knowledge the case-law of judicial bodies as
diverseastheInternationalCourtofJustice,theInternationalTribunalfortheLaw
oftheSea,theInter-AmericanandEuropeanCourtsofHumanRightsortheUnited
Nations Administrative Tribunal. He displays the same ease in dissecting the
classics of our discipline (Grotius, Zouche) and the latest theories of realism or
critical legal studies, complemented with references to other social sciences. He
makes ample use ofwhat Iwould call “artisanal footnotes”, i.e.references that are
not automatically generated by legal research software, but rather reveal that what
madeittothefinaltextistheresultofmonthsofpurposefulinquiryandinquisitive
flânerie inlibraries and texts. Most ofall, his realist theory of the determination of
applicable rules is built on a solid command of the traditional techniques of
internationalscholarship,suchasthestudyofthepreparatoryworksofalegaltext
(asshowninhisexaminationofArticle38oftheStatuteoftheInternationalCourt
ofJustice)ortheexegesisofthecase-law(asdemonstratedinhisdescriptionofthe
jurisprudence of incorporation in the second Chapter or of human rights decisions
inhisthirdChapter).Atatimewhentoomanyauthorsinthelegalliteraturewantto
deconstructwithoutunderstandinghowthingsarebuiltortrytobePicassoswithout
studying Michelangelo, it is refreshing to read an author who masters both the
traditional and modern expressions of our legal language.
Butwhatshouldwe,asinternationallawyers,takefromnormativeplurality?For
the spectators of the judicial (or advisory or quasi-judicial) function, this theory is
an invitation to change our perspective in the reading of the case-law of interna-
tional institutions, freeing ourselves from the strictures of the classical theory of
sourcestotry toassessthe fullcreativepowerthat decision-makersexerciseinthe
determination of the law applicable to a given case. The focus on the notions of
specificity, completeness and purpose, in other words, provides us with an
opportunityforadifferentreadingofwell-knownprecedentsofinternationallawto
revealthesocio-psychologicalfactorsthatinfluencedthem.Forthosewhoareinthe
positionofdecision-makers(judges,experts,etc.)orarecalledtoparticipateinthe
formationofthosedecisions(counselofparties,secretariatofficials,etc.),thetheory
is a call to understand our own subjectivity. In his general course at The Hague
Academy,GeorgesAbi-Saab(whowasmyownVirgilwhenIengagedinthissame
exercise of crafting a thesis) claims, citing Gunnar Myrdal, that in legal studies,
x Foreword
asinothersocialsciences,thehighestdegreeofobjectivitythatscholarsmayreach
is the awareness of their own subjectivities. The theory of normative plurality
developed by Carlos Iván Fuentes in this book is a key contribution to this quest.
March 2016 Santiago Villalpando1
1The views expressed in the present contribution are solely those of the author and do not
necessarilyreflectthoseoftheUnitedNations.
