General International Law

A Way Out Found in the Difference Between Universal and General International Law

Lassa Oppenheim, in the book entitled The Future of International Law, about A Way Out Found in the Difference Between Universal and General International Law, wrote in 1921: But when once we free ourselves from the preconception that the equality of states makes it improper for legislative conferences to adopt any resolutions which are not unanimously supported, there is nothing to prevent a substantial result being arrived at even without unanimity. At this point the difference between general and universal international law furnishes a way out. Rules of universal international law must certainly rest on unanimity. It is postulated in the equality of states that no state can be bound by any law to which it has not given its consent. But there is naught to prevent a legislative conference from framing rules of general international law for those states which assent to it and leaving the dissentient states out of consideration. If the inclusion in a single convention of all the points under discussion be avoided, and if the method, adopted at the second Peace Conference, of dividing the topics of discussion among as many smaller conventions as possible be followed, it will always be found possible to secure the support of the greater number of states for the regulation of any given matter. In no long time thereafter the dissentient states will give in their adherence to these conventions, either in their existing or some amended form. Attention will then be paid also to the consolidation of several smaller laws in a single more comprehensive statute. The nature of the case and the conditions of international life call for concessions without which no progress would be practicable. The course of international legislation hitherto shows unmistakably that the trodden path is the right path. And it must be emphasized that it is open to a state to assent to an act of international legislation although some one or other provision thereof be unacceptable to it. In such a case the assent of the state in question is given with a reservation as regards the particular article of the Act, so that it is in no wise bound by that article. Numerous instances of this could be adduced: thus, at the Hague Conference of 1907 Germany withheld her assent to some of the proposed rules of land war, and England to certain articles in Conventions V and XIII.