Lee: IHR 2005 in the Coronavirus Pandemic: A Need for a New Instrument to Overcome Fragmentation?

Jaemin Lee (Seoul National Univ. - Law) has posted an ASIL Insight on IHR 2005 in the Coronavirus Pandemic: A Need for a New Instrument to Overcome Fragmentation?

Trachtman: Functionalism, Fragmentation, and the Future of International (Trade) Law

Joel P. Trachtman (Tufts Univ. - Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy) has posted Functionalism, Fragmentation, and the Future of International (Trade) Law. Here's the abstract:

This paper makes three related points. First, in order to achieve efficient levels and types of international cooperation, it will be necessary to overcome fragmentation, both in international legislation and in international adjudication. Second, WTO dispute settlement has avoided making cross-sectoral trade-offs that would effectively overcome fragmentation, in part because it generally avoids evaluation of regulatory rationales, and in part because its mandate does not allow application of international law beyond the covered agreements. Third, even if we overcame the fragmentation problem in legislation and adjudication, we would still need to move toward majority voting to reach an efficient level of international law-making.

Megiddo: Beyond Fragmentation: On International Law's Integrationist Forces

Tamar Megiddo (Hebrew Univ. of Jerusalem - Law) has posted Beyond Fragmentation: On International Law's Integrationist Forces (Yale Journal of International Law, forthcoming). Here's the abstract:

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Adopting a comprehensive plan to fight tropical diseases, Brazil came across an unexpected hurdle: its international trade obligations. Its ban on the importation of used and recycled tires, which serve as mosquito breeding sites, was challenged by its trading partners in both the Southern Common Market and the World Trade Organization. Unfortunately for Brazil, the two international tribunals rendered conflicting rulings and Brazil was thus forced to choose between disregarding one of the rulings, or abandoning its plan in order to comply with both. Brazil’s story has been viewed as the epitome of the dangers of international law’s fragmentation, resulting from the proliferation of international legal regimes, and particularly international tribunals. Challenging this accepted narrative, this article argues that Brazil’s difficult situation served in fact as a catalyst of efforts of international legal integration. Rather than becoming paralyzed or turning its back on international law, Brazil remained committed to its international legal obligations and proactively and creatively worked to reconcile them without giving up its domestic agenda.

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The article further challenges the claim, dominant in fragmentation literature, that international law is inevitably headed towards increasing fragmentation. I argue that, like Brazil, states faced with conflicting guidance from international legal regimes make efforts to find a common ground among their various obligations, one still compatible with their own goals. Furthermore, states then strive to convince their peers as well as international monitoring bodies of their proposed solution. In doing so, they promote harmonization of international legal norms and integration among international law’s different legal regimes.

Popa: Patterns of Treaty Interpretation as Anti-Fragmentation Tools

Liliana Popa has published Patterns of Treaty Interpretation as Anti-Fragmentation Tools: A Comparative Analysis with a Special Focus on the ECtHR, WTO and ICJ (Springer 2018). Here's the abstract:

This book investigates whether treaty interpretation at the ECtHR and WTO, which are sometimes perceived as promoting ‘self-contained’ regimes, could constitute a means for unifying international law, or, conversely, might exacerbate the fragmentation of international law. In this regard, the practice of the ICJ on treaty interpretation is used for comparison, since the ICJ has made the greatest contribution to the development and clarification of international law rules and principles. Providing a critical analysis of cases at the ICJ, ECtHR and WTO, both prior to and since the adoption of the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, the book reveals how the ECtHR and WTO apply the general rules of treaty interpretation in patterns which are similar to those used by the ICJ to address difficulties in interpreting the text of treaties. Viewed in the light of the ECtHR’s and WTO’s interpretative practices, both the VCLT’s general rules of interpretation and the ICJ’s interpretative practice serve to counteract the fragmentation of international law.

Harelimana: La défragmentation du droit international de la culture

Jean-Baptiste Harelimana has published La défragmentation du droit international de la culture : Vers une cohérence des normes internationales (L'Harmattan 2016). Here's the abstract:

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La gouvernance internationale est un paysage naturellement fragmenté, composé de traités et d'institutions autonomes, sans hiérarchie existante entre les sources de droit et les traités. Cette fragmentation découle de la souveraineté des États. La fragmentation s'intensifie encore dans le cadre de la culture, parce que les échanges culturelles constituent une question complexe, multisectorielle.

Depuis une vingtaine d'années, un cadre normatif se construit progressivement comme un axe majeur de réponse aux défis de la mondialisation devenue tangible à travers son institutionnalisation, à travers les accords de l'OMC. Après avoir voyagé sous le manteau des droits de l'homme, ce cadre a trouvé un contenu intellectuel et un cadre juridique à travers la convention de l'Unesco sur la diversité culturelle. Cette dernière comble les lacunes du droit international en créant un cadre novateur qui investit les décombres et les interstices entre les droits nationaux et le droit international.

Dans la manière dont elle est institutionnellement saisie et mise en chantier, la problématique de la diversité culturelle est condamnée à osciller entre le droit du commerce et le droit international de la culture. Or, après avoir mis tant d'années à résoudre la question ontologique du droit international envisagé comme un système juridique dont la qualité principale est la cohérence, l'ère est au débat sur l'expansion désordonnée et l'unité de l'ordre juridique au sein duquel cohabite une multiplicité d'acteurs charriant avec eux des échelles de valeurs hétérogènes et animant la structure changeante et complexe du système juridique international. L'UNESCO, comme l'OMC, est en charge de questions sensibles, porteuses de forts enjeux de souveraineté. Dès lors, cette convention devenue un lieu de cristallisation de l'interface culture-commerce, peut-elle apporter des réponses idoines à ces défis. À la clé de cette recherche fondamentale complexe se trouvent des réponses et des applications concrètes dont pourraient bénéficier les praticiens. L'objectif de cet ouvrage est, par une approche inter-systémique insistant sur l'incomplétude des systèmes, d'examiner à quelles conditions les rapports, tantôt apaisés, voire complices, tantôt conflictuels entre les organisations internationales, peuvent ouvrer pour un développement durable par une gouvernance internationale moins éclatée et plus cohérente.

Peters: The Refinement of International Law: From Fragmentation to Regime Interaction and Politicization

Anne Peters (Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law) has posted The Refinement of International Law: From Fragmentation to Regime Interaction and Politicization. Here's the abstract:

The new posture of international courts and tribunals is the ‘spirit of systemic harmonisation’, to use the words of the European Court of Human Rights Grand Chamber in Al Dulimi. Fifteen years after then ICJ President’s Gilbert Guillaume’s ‘proliferation’-speech before the UN General Assembly and ten years after publication of the ILC ‘fragmentation’-report, it is time to bury the f-word. Along that line, this paper concentrates on the positive contribution of the new techniques which courts, tribunals and other actors have developed in order to coordinate the various subfields of international law. If these are accompanied by a proper politicization of international law and governance, they are apt to strengthen both the effectiveness and the legitimacy of international law. Ironically, the ongoing ‘harmonisation’ and ‘integration’ within international law could also be conceptualised as a form of procedural constitutionalisation.

Jakubowski & Wierczyńska: Fragmentation vs the Constitutionalisation of International Law: A Practical Inquiry

Andrzej Jakubowski (Polish Academy of Sciences - Law) & Karolina Wierczyńska (Polish Academy of Sciences - Law) have published Fragmentation vs the Constitutionalisation of International Law: A Practical Inquiry (Routledge 2016). Contents include:

• Andrzej Jakubowski & Karolina Wierczyńska, Introduction
• Jerzy Zajadło & Tomasz Widłak, Constitutionalisation: A New Philosophy of International Law?
• Vassilis Tzevelekos & Lucas Lixinski, From the Internationalisation of National Constitutions to the "Constitutionalisation" of International Law: The Role of Human Rights
• Roman Kwiecień, International Constitutionalism, Language in Legal Discourse, and the Functions of International Law Scholarship
• Maurizio Arcari, The Creeping Constitutionalization and Fragmentation of International Law: From "Constitutional" to "Consistent" Interpretation
• François Finck, The Paradoxes of Fragmentation – Does Regional Constitutionalisation Constitute a Fragmentation Threat to the International Legal Order?
• Krystyna Kowalik Banczyk, International Constitutionalisation of Protection of Privacy in the Internet – the Google Case Example
• Maria Varaki, The "Revival" of Sovereignty via the Complementarity Regime and the ‘Doctrinal’ Idea of Responsibility to Protect; What about Constitutionalization?
• Patrycja Grzebyk, Fragmentation of the Law of Targeting – A Comfortable Excuse or Dangerous Trap
• Karolina Wierczyńska, The Rome Statute and the Debate Surrounding the Constitutionalization, Fragmentation and Pluralisation of International Criminal Law
• Ernst-Ulrich Petersmann, Justifying ‘Fragmentation’ and Constitutional Reforms of International Law in Terms of Justice, Human Rights and ‘Cosmopolitan Constitutionalism’
• Andrzej Jakubowski, A Constitutionalised Legal Order – Exploring the Role of the World Heritage Convention (1972)
• Mónika Ambrus, Constitutionalisation through Fragmented Adjudication
• Chien-Huei Wu, From Fragmentation to Coherence: a Constitutionalist Take on the Trade and Public Health Debates
• Marjolein Schaap & Rubio Imbers, Access to Environmental Justice for NGOs: Interplay Between the Aarhus Convention, the EU Lisbon Treaty, and the European Convention on Human Rights
• Britta Sjöstedt, The ‘Reconciliatory Approach’ – An Interpretative Response to Harmonize International Environmental Law with other Specialised Areas of International Law

Cohen: Fragmentation

Harlan Grant Cohen (Univ. of Georgia - Law) has posted Fragmentation (in Fundamental Concepts for International Law: The Construction of a Discipline, Jean d’Aspremont & Sahib Singh eds., forthcoming). Here's the abstract:

A danger, an opportunity, passé, a cliché, destabilizing, empowering, destructive, creative: Depending on whom you ask, fragmentation has meant any and all of these for international law. The concept of fragmentation has been a mirror reflecting international lawyers’ perception of themselves, their field, and its prospects for the future.

This chapter chronicles fragmentation’s meanings over the past few decades. In particular, it focuses on the spreading fears of fragmentation around the millennium, how the fears were eventually repurposed, where, speculatively, those fear may have gone, and how and to what extent faith in international law was restored.

Colangelo: A Systems Theory of Fragmentation and Harmonization

Anthony J. Colangelo (Southern Methodist Univ. - Law) has posted A Systems Theory of Fragmentation and Harmonization (New York University Journal of International Law and Politics, forthcoming). Here's the abstract:

The firmly lodged yet rapidly accelerating phenomenon of international law’s “fragmentation” presents the international legal system with what looks like a multilayered existential threat. Theoretically, how can we conceive of international law as a unitary system if its rules are becoming progressively frayed and pixilated to the point of incoherence? Doctrinally, what is “the law” if different, purportedly authoritative, bodies interpret it so differently? And practically, how are actors increasingly subject to the ever-expanding universe of international law supposed to behave when the law itself is so splintered that it may point them in many, perhaps contradictory, directions at once?

The prevailing view so far among international law scholars, institutions, and decision-makers is to “abandon every hope” of a coherent, unitary legal system and instead settle for managing (as opposed to resolving) conflicting rules and interpretations thereof through conflict of laws methodologies.

This Article fights against that view; that is, it fights for the international legal system’s coherence. The Article first argues that the conflict of laws view promises only to entrench the evils supposedly spawned by fragmentation that threaten to take down the system; namely, compromises in core justice principles of equality (or the ideal that like cases be treated alike) and predictability of the law. The Article next draws from systems theory and its fulcrum concept of autopoiesis to defend international law as a unitary system striving for its own survival. And it argues that, rather than posing an existential threat, fragmentation may paradoxically be a species of growing pain in the system’s long-term maturation. In this connection, the Article proposes two methodological tools for decision-makers seeking to advance the project of a unitary international legal system: a presumption of coherence and a presumption of catholicity. In combination, these tools aim to promote legal coherence and correctness without the compromises in justice that invariably attend true conflict of laws disputes — compromises that conflict of laws methods institutionalize but that the Article’s coherence methods seek to avoid.

The result is to answer the threat posed by fragmentation with a novel alternative account of how fragmentation may: (i) fit into international law’s long-term evolution as an ultimately coherent and robust system; (ii) eventually, if counterintutively, lead to broader and deeper harmonization of the law regulating international disputes, and; (iii) in turn, furnish more predictable and acceptable rules for actors involved in those disputes. Indeed, the Article argues that its theory not only provides an alternative description of fragmentation, but also that its descriptive account leads to a more just international legal system.

Shany: International Human Rights Bodies and the Little-Realized Threat of Fragmentation

Yuval Shany (Hebrew Univ. of Jerusalem - Law) has posted International Human Rights Bodies and the Little-Realized Threat of Fragmentation. Here's the abstract:

This note discusses the coordination problems encountered by international human rights bodies, who apply comparable legal standards emanating from separate treaties, and confront significant challenges of procedural coordination and normative harmonization. Particular attention will be given in this regard to the policy considerations invoked by such bodies.

The discussion comprises two parts: First, I will discuss the doctrinal tools and theoretical constructs which international human rights bodies have been using in order to mitigate normative clashes with other such bodies. Such tools and constructs may explain the ability of human rights adjudicators to resist normative fragmentation. The second part of this note will address the policy considerations that may explain some of the reasons why international human rights bodies may choose to issue certain decisions which would, nonetheless, clash with decisions of other human rights bodies, and why, in most cases, pursuing normative harmony appears to be preferable to normative fragmentation.

Martineau: Le débat sur la fragmentation du droit international : Une analyse critique

Anne-Charlotte Martineau (Max Planck Institute Luxembourg for International, European and Regulatory Procedural Law) has published Le débat sur la fragmentation du droit international : Une analyse critique (Bruylant 2016). Here's the abstract:

Cet ouvrage cherche à analyser de manière critique le débat sur la fragmentation du droit international tel qu’il est apparu à la fin des années 1990. Débattre de la fragmentation, c’est débattre du sort réservé au droit international en raison de la prolifération des institutions et des modes de pensée spécialisés. De l’extérieur, le droit international public semble dépassé par les structures dynamiques et informelles de gouvernance privée tandis que de l’intérieur, la croissance continue de ses branches spécialisées pose la question de savoir s’il existe encore un tronc commun ou un noyau dur autour duquel la discipline serait unifiée. Du point de vue interne, donc, la multiplication des règles et des institutions spécialisées est perçue comme un danger qui doit –et qui peut– être évité, tant et aussi longtemps que l’on assure la cohérence du droit international général et de ses branches spécialisées, travail qui incombe à la dogmatique juridique ainsi qu’à la pratique juridictionnelle. Du point de vue externe, l’apparition des régimes de régulation fonctionnels témoigne plus simplement de l’impact de la mondialisation sur le droit (international) et de la façon dont celui-ci s’adapte à celle-là au travers de nouveaux processus déformalisés de juridisation.

L’objectif de cet ouvrage n’est pas de trancher entre les positions internes et externes prises par les internationalistes. Il s’agit plutôt de montrer qu’aucune des positions ne peut l’emporter sur les autres de manière décisive, d’expliquer les raisons de ce phénomène et d’en analyser les conséquences.

Andenas & Bjorge: Farewell to Fragmentation: Reassertion and Convergence in International Law

Mads Andenas (Universitetet i Oslo - Law) & Eirik Bjorge (Univ. of Oxford - Law) have published A Farewell to Fragmentation: Reassertion and Convergence in International Law (Cambridge Univ. Press 2015). Contents include:

• Mads Andenas & Eirik Bjorge, From fragmentation to convergence
• Christopher Greenwood, Unity and diversity in international law
• Antônio Augusto Cançado Trindade, A century of international justice and prospects for the future
• Nigel Rodley, The International Court of Justice and human rights treaty bodies
• Vera Gowlland-Debbas, The ICJ and the challenges of human rights law
• Philippa Webb, Factors influencing fragmentation and convergence in international courts
• Dean Spielmann, Fragmentation or partnership? The reception of ICJ case-law by the European Court of Human Rights
• Magdalena Forowicz, Factors influencing the reception of international law in the case law of the European Court of Human Rights
• Cameron Miles, The influence of the ICJ on the modern doctrine of provisional measures before international courts and tribunals: a 'uniform' approach
• Lawrence Hill-Cawthorne, Just another case of treaty interpretation? Reconciling humanitarian and human rights law in the ICJ
• Emanuel Castellarin, The European Union's participation in international economic institutions: a mutually beneficial reassertion of the centre
• Veronika Fikfak, Reinforcing the ICJ's central international role – domestic courts' treatment of ICJ decisions and opinions
• Lorenzo Gradoni, The International Court of Justice and the international customary law game of cards
• Alexander Orakhelashvili, State practice, treaty practice and state immunity
• Jean-Louis Halpérin, Historical sketches of custom in international law
• Robert Kolb, Is there a subject-matter ontology in interpretation of international legal norms?
• Paolo Palchetti, Halfway between fragmentation and convergence: the role of the rules of the organization in the interpretation of constituent treaties
• Eirik Bjorge, The convergence of the methods of treaty interpretation
• Mads Andenas, The centre reasserting itself

Rachovitsa: Fragmentation of International Law Revisited

Adamantia Rachovitsa (Qatar Univ. - Law) has posted Fragmentation of International Law Revisited: Insights, Good Practices and Lessons to Be Learned from the Case Law of the European Court of Human Rights (Leiden Journal of International Law, forthcoming). Here's the abstract:

This Article discusses the contribution of the European Court of Human Rights to mitigating difficulties arising from the fragmentation of international law. It argues that the Court’s case law provides insights and good practices to be followed. First, the Article furnishes evidence that the Court has developed an autonomous and distinct interpretative principle to construe the European Convention on Human Rights by taking other norms of international law into account. Second, the Article offers a blueprint of the methodology that the Court employs when engaging with external norms in the interpretation process. The analysis explores the Court’s approach to subtle contextual differences between similar or identical international norms and its position towards the requirements of Article 31 (3)(c) of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (VCLT). It concludes that international courts are developing innovative interpretative practices, which may not be strictly based in the letter of the VCLT.

Peters: Constitutional Fragments – On the Interaction of Constitutionalization and Fragmentation in International Law

Anne Peters (Max-Planck-Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law) has posted Constitutional Fragments – On the Interaction of Constitutionalization and Fragmentation in International Law. Here's the abstract:

This contribution suggests that a constitutional perspective allows for a more adequate description of the international order as it stands, exactly because of the latter’s fragmented character. Beyond that heuristic insight, this paper makes four points: First, the constitutionalization of international law is a broad and deep phenomenon which historically started before fragmentation (section 2) has been discussed as a problem. Second, fragmentation and constitutionalization are mutually reinforcing and to some extent even mutually constitutive: On the one hand, constitutionalization phenomena within international law have exacerbated fragmentation, because they have from the outset on taken place at multiple sites, and have produced only constitutional fragments (section 3). On the other hand, fragmentation in turn has triggered new forms of constitutionalization in international law; the processes of fragmentation are themselves being ‘constitutionalized’. Put differently, constitutionalization (as a process) and global constitutionalism (as an intellectual framework) is profoundly shaping how law-appliers deal with fragmentation, notably because the current ‘second stage’-fragmentation debate which concentrates on principles, procedures, and institutions for coordinating, harmonising, and integrating various international regimes, is explicitly or implicitly guided by genuine constitutionalist considerations (section 4).

Thirdly, the discourses of fragmentation and constitutionalization are largely motivated by a common root concern, namely the concern about the legitimacy of international law. Both phenomena also share the merit of promoting contestation and politization within the international legal process; they are kindred-spirited. Importantly, constitutionalism is not a reconciliatory strategy responding to fragmentation but a critical discourse (section 5).

My conclusion is that global constitutionalism is a useful analytic lens for understanding how international law evolves and works, as long as it is understood as ‘thin’ (contending itself with procedures as opposed to substance), and inevitably multi-level (necessarily involving domestic constitutional law). Even if a global constitutionalism of this type stays (partly) outside the picture of international law proper, it will always be reproduced in the fragments of the international legal order (section 6).

Prost: Unitas multiplex : Unités et fragmentations en droit international

Mario Prost (Keele Univ. - Law) has published Unitas multiplex : Unités et fragmentations en droit international (Bruylant 2013). This is the French version of the author's The Concept of Unity in Public International Law (Hart Publishing 2012). Here's the abstract:

La « fragmentation » est devenue une métaphore fondamentale, bien que controversée, de la doctrine du droit international à l’ère de la globalisation. Le concept d’unité, qui se situe au cœur du débat sur la fragmentation, n’a pourtant fait l’objet à ce jour d’aucune véritable mise en perspective théorique. Le plus souvent, le concept est utilisé de manière intuitive, sans être véritablement explicité. Le présent ouvrage s’emploie à dissiper ce flou théorique et aborde du point de vue de la philosophie du droit les possibles significations du concept d’unité dans le champ du droit international.