[Dr. Ulf Linderfalk is a Professor of International Law at the Faculty of Law at Lund University, Sweden.]
Julian’s article focuses on a single proposition (p. 780)
“[W]hen an interpreter thinks a text [of a treaty] is fairly clear and produces results that are not manifestly unreasonable or absurd, she ought to give that prima facie reading preclusive effect over anything the travaux [préparatoires] might suggest to the contrary.”
Specifically, Julian argues (p. 781), that this proposition – while today shared by an overwhelming majority of international judiciaries and legal scholars – “cannot be reconciled with the agreement actually reached in 1969” and embodied by Articles 31 and 32 of the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (VCLT).
In critically assessing Mortenson’s article, I find that it builds on three assumptions:
- In the final analysis, the legally correct meaning of a treaty is determined by the intention of its parties. Thus, when interpreting a treaty, the ultimate purpose is to find out how the original parties to the treaty actually intended it to be understood.
- Articles 31 and 32 of the VCLT guide interpreters to discovering the common intention of treaty parties. Thus, ordinary meaning, context, preparatory work, and other means of interpretation help interpreters understand the legally correct meaning of a treaty.
- A detailed analysis of the preparatory work of the Vienna Convention is an appropriate method for a scholarly analysis of the legally correct meaning of Articles 31 and 32 of the VCLT.
As I will explain in my two posts for this Symposium, I think all three of Julian’s assumptions are either fundamentally flawed or seriously debatable. Readers with a particular interest in issues of treaty
interpretation might want to consult the slightly more elaborate working paper that I have recently posted on the
SSRN.
