1. International Law

2. Objectives
The present survey course imparts a sense of the nature, breadth, and practice of international law.
It considers international law in terms of
its sources,
its political implications as recorded in the history of states, and
its application in international conflicts of different natures and degrees of severity.
Skills in legal thinking and argument building.
Improves reading comprehension and skimming material for information.
It demands group effort.

3. What is international law
International law is a body of principles, customs, and rules
recognized as binding obligations by sovereign states and
such other entities as have been granted international personality;
the law is also increasingly applicable to individuals in their relations with states.

4. International law as compared to other bodies of law
While national law governs the relations between individuals in a state, between individuals and their states and individuals of different states, international law governs the relationships between states and increasingly between individuals, organizations, and states.
The major difference between these two bodies of law is
the sovereignty of the "subjects" of international law
the absence of an effective institutional structure to regularly and predictably enforce the law.
Thus international law is said to operate in anarchy, whether it does or not, is a matter of perspective.

5. Families of law and the heredity of international law
Common Law system
Roman Law system
Justinian Code
Sacred Church law from natural law and Stoicism
Napoleonic Code
Islamic Law
Confucian law
Socialist Law
Traditional Law

6. Different schools of law
To introduce different schools of IL
Positivist and Naturalists.
Among publicists:
Natural law: laws of divine origin governed human affairs. [llaws of nature governed the physical world]
Today seen as origin of international law
Positive law is what states legislate among themselves and agree to be bound by
Realists vs. idealists –on the existence of the law. Depends on the vision of the international system

7. Historical roots
Modern international law has its origins in Western civilization and
Its modern existence is dated by scholars to the 17th century.
Its roots actually, reach back before the Roman Empire and are more globally in spread.

8. One nearly complete example of the Code survives today, on a diorite stele in the shape of a huge index finger,[4] 2.25-metre (7.4 ft) tall (see images at right). The Code is inscribed in the Akkadian language, using cuneiform script carved into the stele..
The Code of Hammurabi was one of several sets of laws in the ancient Near East.[8] The code of laws was arranged in orderly groups, so that everyone who read the laws would know what was required of them.[9] Earlier collections of laws include the Code of Ur-Nammu, king of Ur (c BC), the Laws of Eshnunna (c BC) and the codex of Lipit-Ishtar of Isin (c BC), while later ones include theHittite laws, the Assyrian laws, and Mosaic Law.[10] These codes come from similar cultures in a relatively small geographical area, and they have passages which resemble each other.

9. Contemporary International Law
International law is dynamic; it continues to evolve adapting to changing circumstances, the politics of states, state and demands of the global system.
In 1945, there were 47 sovereign states recognized under international law, the majority of which were part of the Western industrialized world; today there are at least 193 sovereign states, the majority of which are non-Western. Thus international law is experiencing a
period of accelerated evolution to meet the challenges of maintaining order in a dynamic, increasingly complex, “globalized” world transformed by scientific and technological progress and challenged by the waxing and waning of changing civil and ideological forces.

10. Objects of International Law in historical and evolutionary perspective perspective
Before World War II, the law of territory, sea, war, and the rights and duties of states were the principal concerns of international lawyers and scholars.
Since the 1960s there has been a vast expansion of the law with the development of principles and rules to respond to concerns about the environment, economic relations, national security under nuclear and terrorist threats, and socio-political justice (human rights).

11. Is international law effective? And if so to what extent?
The largely orderly, multifarious relations between and among governments testify to the reality and effectiveness of public and private international law.
Easily 90% of inter-governmental relations are governed by international law.
But deliberate and frequent defiance of international law goes unpunished unless countries decide to do something to prevent or put an end to the violations.

12. Work of an international lawyer?
International lawyers face two major tasks:
They adjudicate and interpret the laws, teasing them out from their different sources given particular cases and,
They must develop new rules to deal with a changing political, environmental, human, and economic circumstances.

13. Objectives of this Course
To consider from historic, present, and future perspectives, international law and its impact upon national actions and world problems. .
To introduce the concepts and sources of international law.
To brief law cases.
To develop legal skills to work through international legal problems, and having done so,
To confront a set of current world order problems with the aim of providing reasonable solutions based on the existing body of international law.
To draft a legal argument and present it in a court room situation.