INTERNATIONAL LAW

international law.The legal system governing the relationships between nations; more modernly, the law of international relations, embracing not only nations but also such participants as international organizations and individuals (such as those who invoke their human rights or commit war crimes). — Also termed public international law; law of nations; law of nature and nations; jus gentium; jus gentium publicum; jus inter gentes; foreign-relations law; interstate law; law between states (the word state, in the latter two phrases, being equivalent to nation or country).

Cf. TRANSNATIONAL LAW. [Cases: International Law 1–13. C.J.S. International Law §§

2–65.]

“[I]nternational law or the law of nations must be defined as law applicable to states in their mutual relations and to individuals in their relations with states. International law may also, under this hypothesis, be applicable to certain interrelationships of individuals themselves, where such interrelationships involve matters of international concern.” Philip C. Jessup, A Modern Law of Nations 17 (1949).

customary international law.International law that derives from the practice of states and is accepted by them as legally binding. • This is one of the principal sources or building blocks of the international legal system.

private international law.International conflict of laws. • Legal scholars frequently lament the name “private international law” because it misleadingly suggests a body of law somehow parallel

to public international law, when in fact it is merely a part of each legal system’s private law. — Also termed international private law; jus gentium privatum; intermunicipal law; comity; extraterritorial recognition of rights. See CONFLICT OF LAWS(2).

“[A] word must be said about the name or title of the subject. No name commands universal approval. The expression ‘Private International Law,’ coined by Story in 1834 [Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Conflict of Laws § 9 (1834)], and used on the Continent by [Jean Jacques Gaspard] Foelix in 1838, has been adopted by Westlake and Foote and most French authors. The chief criticism directed against its use is its tendency to confuse private international law with the law of nations or public international law, as it is usually called. There are obvious differences between the two. The latter primarily governs the relations between sovereign states and it may perhaps be regarded as the common law of mankind in an early state of development; the former is designed to regulate disputes of a private nature, notwithstanding that one of the parties may be a private state. There is, at any rate in theory, one common system of public international law … ; but … there are as many systems of private international law as there are systems of municipal law.” G.C. Cheshire, Private International Law 15 (6th ed. 1961).

[Blacks Law 8th]