Regional or General International Law? A Misleading Dilemma*

Abstract

Of old lawyers have been wrangling about the true nature of international law and indeed about its very existence. Although there is no likelihood that they will relinquish this pleasant habit in the near future, certain shifts may be discerned in the points on which their opinions are divided. At a time not so very far behind us there was much controversy about the question as to whether public international law should be considered only the external segment of public (or constitutional) municipal law— ausseres Staatsrecht as the Germans call it—or whether it constitutes a truly objective system of law having its sway over States independently from its adoption by any rule of municipal law. If the former proposition is the correct one—and in the Netherlands it has been vigorously and eloquently advocated by Suyling —public international law would be similar in character to private international law. For today it seems to be almost common ground that in principle rules of private international law appertain to municipal and not to international law in the objective sense.