Dualism, Domestic Courts, and the Rule of International Law

Abstract

The continuing development of an international community within which states generate and bind themselves to legal rules and standards is designed not only to achieve international peace and security—as expressed in the Charter of the United Nations1—but also in order to create a community of states within which each state is limited by external legal norms and not merely by its own will or political, financial and military resources. In other words, one of the products of the creation of a relatively formalised international community has been the creation of an international legal community of states within which an international rule of law continues to develop. This chapter is not concerned with that international rule of law as it operates on the international legal level; rather it is concerned with the mechanisms by which the rule of international law may be brought about. In other words, it is concerned with ways in which the international rule of law, including international legal norms, might be enforced by means of domestic legal processes thus resulting in a rule of international law.