Standardization: A Dynamic and Procedural Conceptualization of International Law-Making

Abstract

AbstractThe paper analyses the dynamic procedures that work during the formation of international law in international organizations and conventional frameworks. These procedures organize and structure the interactive exercise of the normative function by law-creating bodies and law-applying bodies. The paper conceives of this ‘way’ of making international law as a law-making method that the concept of standardization helps to understand. Grounded in Aristotelian dialectic logic, standardization indeed conceptualizes the dialogic and procedural law-making that works for normative coherence in contexts characterized by co-operation and the heterogeneity of interests. Introducing this concept, the paper insists on the fact that it is the procedural nature of the dialogue that is crucial to reach normative coherence. Drawing on the consequences of standardization, and regarding dynamic procedures, it reappraises the status and the importance of both the different sources of international law and the different participants to international law-making. Also, the paper points out the predominance of normative coherence, as well as that of its ‘guarantor’, namely procedure that its author considers the cornerstone of legal certainty in the co-operative context of the international society.