Comparative International Law at the ICTY: The General Principles Experiment

Abstract

For a significant period of time, the comparativist and the international lawyer were considered 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. of these, one of the ripest areas for further reflection is the “general principles 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. Thus, the attempt of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (Icty) to use the general principles as a freestanding source of international criminal law provides a particularly intriguing opportunity to study the interaction between international and comparative law.