In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Author: Isabelle Van Damme

04 Mar

It seems that our discussion these past few days confirms that 40 years after the Vienna Conference the meta-questions relating to treaty interpretation remain unaltered. But perhaps it also appears that the ILC ultimately made the right decision to codify the relatively few basic principles on which agreement could be found. The Commission always made it clear that...

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03 Mar

As Jan suggested at the end of his post, it seems that the broader question underlying our debate is how principles of treaty interpretation are used to empower international courts and tribunals and what the limits are of that function.   On interpretation as a rule-governed activity, it seems that we all approach Articles 31 to 33 VCLT as principles rather than...

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02 Mar

In the introduction to our discussion, Richard also raised the question of: ‘Should preparatory work be investigated only to identify agreement among the negotiators or, particularly in the case of treaty provisions with a codifying aspect, to assess the state of international law leading up to the treaty and how this affected the negotiators?’ With respect to the first aspect of...

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02 Mar

The initial post introducing our discussion of Treaty Interpretation raises various issues of interest to the study and practice of treaty interpretation. In this first reply, I focus on the first question relating to the tragedy of ‘insistent emphasis upon an impossible, conformity-imposing textuality’. My responses are informed by my study of treaty interpretation by the WTO Appellate Body. I believe...

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