Treaties , International Law Explained | Lex Animata by Hesham Elrafei

Treaties as source of International public law
By Hesham Elrafei

Overview of one of the main sources of international public law as stated in Article 38 of the international court of justice ICJ statute : treaty, customary law, courts decisions, jurisprudence and law principles.

Treaties , explained , simplified and visualized.

Treaties are written agreements, used by countries to bind themselves by creating mutual rights and obligations.
They are one of the oldest international relations methods, and are considered a primary source of international law, also superior to customary rules, since they require explicit consent from states.

The obligatory nature of treaties, is founded upon the customary international law principle, that agreements are binding , and they are similar to contracts as they regulate the creation of agreements, their interpretation, and what happens when agreements are breached.

Treaties can cover various international agreements, ranging from Conventions, Pacts, Charters, Statutes, Declarations, Protocols, and Covenants, or exchange of letters. All these terms relate to the same thing: the creation of written agreements, whereby countries commit to act in a certain way, or to set up particular relations between themselves.

A treaty may cover a broad range of issues between countries, as almost everything needs an international agreement, to lay down the necessary conditions of operation.

Treaties are divided based on the scope of application and the extent of responsibilities they impose, into two main types:

law-making treaties, and treaty contracts.

Treaty contracts are agreements between two or small numbers of states, and they are usually concerned with technical or commercial issues.

Law making treaties are broader agreements, with universal or general relevance, as they create general norms, to govern the conduct of the parties; therefore, they have a direct influence on the content of international law,

While Treaties derive their power from State approval, they only bind Countries parties to them; Certain treaties however attempt to establish a ‘regime’ that extend to nonparties, like the Vienna Convention on the law of treaties and the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, as well as various provisions of the United Nations Charter.

Such law-making treaties require the participation of a large number of states and may produce rules that will bind everyone, in particular when many states informally accept the provisions of the treaties, even without becoming parties to them. In that case, that treaty will be viewed as a source of international law for non-signatories states as well.

There are also many treaties which reflect or codify existing customary rules, like the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, such treaties bind non-parties, not because of the treaty provision itself, but because they reaffirm a rule of customary international law.

Treaties may also be constitutive, in the sense that they create an international organization and serve as its constitution, defining its powers and responsibilities, such as the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, and the United Nations Charter.

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