Droit international

The presentation of international law has not always been able to avoid the pitfalls of angelism or pure theory. Sometimes, international law has been viewed from the perspective of peace law alone, it was thus treated in the same way as United Nations law – which may have cast doubts on its usefulness. Viewed from a purely State perspective, it was reduced to public international law alone, which has a considerably limited scope and has exposed its own weakness in the face of recent flagrant violations of its most fundamental rules by too many of the most powerful countries. The phenomenon of globalisation has not ceased at the borders of the economy and has profoundly changed the legal landscape, both internal and international. In both cases, it has led to the creation and development of a genuine legal polycentrism where the law has ceased to be a State monopoly expanding its sources to civil society actors. The transnationalisation of international law, which has already been evident for a long time, is constantly subject to significant acceleration. Today, private individuals – starting with multinational enterprises and non-governmental organisations – are the source of an increasing number of legal rules, thereby largely competing with states and intergovernmental institutions in their normative function. Better, although they are not legally obliged to do so, they contribute to the spread of international rules laid down by States, in particular but not exclusively in the field of human rights and humanitarian law. Thus, domestic legal systems and the international legal system have increasingly close relationships, sometimes even finding themselves in real situations of osmosis. Today, many rules of international/transnational law form part of the legal patrimony of individuals, while the latter have valuable means to ensure compliance with them for their benefit, thanks to a wide range of remedies offered both by domestic and by the international legal system itself. This book aims at putting international law into practice in the reality of contemporary transnational society.