Publication
The American Journal of International Law
Volume
109
Page
486
Year
2015
Abstract
For a significant period of time, the comparativist and the international lawyer were con- sidered to inhabit different worlds: the former scrutinized similarities and differences between domestic legal systems while the latter focused on the universal realm of international law that overlays these systems. This comfortably segregated image has been conclusively shattered by numerous studies demonstrating the multiple areas of interaction between international and comparative law.1 Of these, one of the ripest areas for further reflection is the “general prin- ciples of law” as a source of international law. Puzzlingly, given the traditional domestic law origins of the general principles of law, comparative law and methodology have rarely featured in the scholarship and jurisprudence on the general principles.2 Thus, the attempt of the Inter- national Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) to use the general principles as a freestanding source of international criminal law provides a particularly intriguing oppor- tunity to study the interaction between international and comparative law.
Recommended Citation
Neha Jain, Comparative International Law at the ICTY: The General Principles Experiment, 109 Am. J. Int'l L. 486 (2015), available at https://scholarship.law.umn.edu/faculty_articles/427.
