Chapter Two. Customary International Law And Its Relationship With Other Sources And Methods Of Law-Identification

Abstract

As different methods are employed to ascertain a new norm of customary international law, it is important to assess which methods lie at the heart of other law-making processes of international law. Regarding this issue, the general principles of international law of Article 38 (c) of the ICJ Statute are of particular interest: they have been named as the underlying constitutive source of international human rights law. Hence, this chapter analyses the relationship between customary international law and this source of international law. There are also other techniques employed in the process of finding norms of international law which may indicate whether a new international rule can be derived from of the canon of those already existing. This is done by interpretation and analogy, in particular. These methods and their relationship with custom are also analysed in detail in the chapter.Keywords: customary international law; ICJ Statute; international human rights law