The preah vihear case and regional customary law

Chinese Journal of International Law

Volumn 9, Issue 1, 2010, Pages 111-126

  Buss, Andreas ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF OTTAWA   (Canada)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 77949332673     PISSN: 15401650     EISSN: 17469937     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/chinesejil/jmp038     Document Type: Article

References (55)

1. Case Concerning the Temple of Preah Vihear (Cambodia v. Thailand), ICJ Reports 1962, p. 6 et seq.
2. Phil C.W. Chan, Acquiescence/Estoppel in International Boundaries: Temple of Preah Vihear Revisited, 3 Chinese JIL (2004), 421-439.
3. G.M. Kelly, The Temple Case in Historical Perspective, 39 British YBIL (1963), 462-472.
4. Ibid., 472.
5. Island of Palmas arbitration (1928), RIAA II, 829, 845.
6. Alphonse Rivier, Principes du droit des gens (Paris: Arthur Rousseau, 1896), 10.
7. Ibid., 8.
8. William E. Hall, A Treatise on International Law (Oxford: Clarendon, 1924), 47.
9. On this question, see also Wilhelm Grewe, The Epochs of International Law (Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2000), 454.
10. Jennifer Pitts, Boundaries of Victorian International Law, in: Duncan Bell (ed.), Victorian Visions of Global Order (Cambridge University Press, 2007), 69.
11. Franz von Liszt, Das Völkerrecht (Berlin: Häring, 1911), 5.
12. Alphonse Rivier, above n.6, 14.
13. Alphonse Rivier, Lehrbuch des Völkerrechts (Stuttgart: Ferdinand Enke, 1889), 94.
14. While these lines are limited to a brief exposition of the opinions of qualified and well-known publicists of English, French and German language, they leave aside the factual situation of that time. It may, for instance, be remembered that consuls of Asian States in Europe were notaccorded the special privilege of jurisdiction over their own citizens which European consuls in Asian countries (Turkey, China, Siam) took for granted.
15. This implies much more than Judge Bebler's comment in the Rann of Kutch case (1968), 50 ILR at 414, about the embarrassment of the weak before the strong in cases of territorial pretensions, it implies the absence of any legal framework, except eventual contracts, for the relationship between Siam and European countries.
16. According to Kelsen, Principles of International Law (London/New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1966), 437/8, the term "source" is a highly ambiguous expression in legal theory, because it refers to the procedure of creating law as well as to the reasons why norms are valid and even to all those ideas which influence the law-creating organs. Thus, the (questionable) doctrine that custom does not create law but is only an evidence of the existence of a legal norm would then, for instance, presuppose the idea of Volksgeist (Savigny) or of solidarité sociale (Duguit) as legal sources. Kelsen also noted that a rule of customary law, namely pacta sunt servanda, is the reason for the validity of treaties and thus, in this particular sense, the source of treaties and of conventional international law. Similar remarks can be found in Josef Kunz, The Nature of Customary International Law, 47 AJIL (1953), 662-669, at 663.
17. Hans Kelsen, Théorie du droit international coutumier, Revue internationale de la théorie du droit (1939), 253-274, at 269.
18. The other monist version which insists on the primacy of municipal law over international law is almost completely forgotten today although it was still mentioned in Alfred Verdross and Bruno Simma, Universelles Völkerrecht (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1976), 67.
19. Janne Nijman and André Nollkaemper (eds.), New Perspectives on the Divide Between National and International Law (Oxford University Press, 2007), 2. This anti-theoretical and pragmatic view is also quite obvious in an article by Martti Koskenniemi and Päivi Leino, Fragmentation of International Law? Postmodern Anxieties, 15 Leiden JIL, 553- 580, which describes the tensions between various international forums, and the lack of a single hierarchy - and then argues against the desirability of unity and "abstract consistency" in international law. The unity of national and international law as a postulate of legal theory - of which Kelsen spoke - has been set aside here.
20. This view was strongly defended by Nicolas Mateesco, La coutume dans les cycles juridiques internationaux (Paris: Pedone, 1947), 212.
21. Franz von Liszt, above n.10, 12.
22. G. Gianni, La coutume en droit international (Paris: Pedone, 1931), 119.
23. Carl Schmitt, Der Nomos der Erde (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1950), 185.
24. Hermann Mosler, General Principles of Law, Encyclopedia of Public International Law (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2000).
25. Similarly, Robert Kolb, below n.31 at 126, states that general principles, derived from the legal tradition of municipal jurisprudence, are often put into the category of international custom rather than in their own special category (as does the Statute of the ICJ).
26. Alfred von Verdross, Les principes généraux dans la jurisprudence internationale, 52 Recueil des cours (Collected Courses of the Hague Academy of International Law) (1935), 191-251, at 203.
27. In a similar vein, Charles Rousseau, Droit International Public, tome 1 (Paris, 1970) at 331, explains that there may exist municipal laws or regulations which become internationally important if they indicate a kind of conduct which a State intends to adopt in relation to other States. For if the same attitude is adopted by the law of these other States there could develop a practice which might become an international custom. Certainly, from the point of view of international law municipal laws are simple facts, but if they are manifestations of the same principles and convictions with regard to international life, they may be considered as expressions of international customary law.
28. Asylum case, ICJ Reports 1950, 266.
29. Rights of Passage over Indian Territory case, ICJ Reports 1960, 4.
30. Karol Wolfke, Custom in Present International Law (Dordrecht/Boston/ London: Martinus Nijhoff, 1993), 90.
31. Louis Henkin, International Law: Politics and Values (Dordrecht/Boston/ London: Martinus Nijhoff, 1995), 40.
32. Robert Kolb, Selected Problems in the Theory of Customary International Law, 50 Netherlands ILR (2003), 127.
33. Nijman and Nollkaemper, above n.18, 342.
34. On the Indian non-individualistic ideology, please see Louis Dumont, Homo hierarchicus (Paris: Gallimard, 1966).
35. Werner Menski, Comparative Law in a Global Context: The Legal Systems of Asia and Africa (Cambridge University Press, 2006), 183. This Asian legal plurality, which is based on interaction and sometimes on hierarchy, is obviously quite different from the multitude of decentred law-making processes, e.g. lex mercatoria, a purely empirical plurality, of which Gunther Teubner writes in Global Law without a State (Aldershot: Dartmouth, 1997).
36. Eugen Ehrlich, Grundlegung der Soziologie des Rechts (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1967), 393 sqq.
37. Masaji Chiba (ed.), Asian Indigenous Law. In Interaction with Received Law (London: KPI, 1986).
38. Robert Lingat, Evolution of the Conception of Law in Burma and Siam, 38.1 The Journal of the Siam Society (1950), 26.
39. Robert Lingat, Les sources du droit dans le système traditionnel de L'Inde (Paris: Mouton, 1967), 198.
40. Theodor Mommsen (ed.), Digesta Iustiniani Augusti (reprint: Berlin: Weidmann, 1962).
41. Preedee Kasemsup, Reception of Law in Thailand - a Buddhist Society, in: M. Chiba (ed.), above n.36, 294.
42. Georg Jellinek, Allgemeine Staatslehre (Berlin: Julius Springer, 1914), 440.
43. Of course, sovereignty in Western legal thought is not the absence of all limits of power, for, at least since Kant, it implies the capacity of self-determination of the power of the State which, however, is not limited by exterior powers. More on this in G. Jellinek, above n.41, 481.
44. M.B. Hooker, Legal Pluralism. An Introduction to Colonial and Neo-colonial Laws (Oxford: Clarendon, 1975), 372.
45. S.J. Tambiah, World Conqueror and World Renouncer (Cambridge University Press, 1976), 114-123.
46. Sir Henry Maine, Ancient Law (London: J.M. Dent, 1917), 60/61.
47. Thongchai Winichakul, Siam Mapped (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1994), 74/75.
48. The Russian Tsar considered himself, and was considered by the Muslims, in a manner for which modern international law makes no provision, as head of the Orthodox peoples, in whosoever's domain they might dwell. It was his right and his duty to concern himself with their welfare which so often troubled the chanceries of Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
49. Thongchai Winichakul, above n.46, 93.
50. Heinz Bechert, 2 Buddhismus, Staat und Gesellschaft in den Ländern des Theravada Buddhismus 1-3 (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1973), 198.
51. Ibid., 2.
52. The Cūlavamsa is a Ceylonese chronicle, written between the thirteenth and the eighteenth century, which can also serve as a source of information of customary law in the Theravada countries of Southeast Asia.
53. Robert Lingat, Royautés bouddhiques (Paris: EHESS, 1989), 182-185.
54. See PCIJ, Ser. A, n.10, 28.
55. Dieter Schröder, Die Dritte Welt und das Völkerrecht (Hamburg: Alfred Metzner, 1970), 41-44.