Legislation and Law on the International Plane

Hameed, Asif

doi:10.2139/ssrn.2614614

Legislation and Law on the International Plane

University of Cambridge Faculty of Law Research Paper No. 35/2015

28 Pages Posted: 5 Jun 2015 Last revised: 23 Jun 2015

See all articles by Asif Hameed

Asif Hameed

Southampton Law School, University of Southampton

Date Written: 2015

Abstract

What is legislation? What is law? A great deal of ink has been spilled on these questions. In this essay I wish to investigate the answers that have been provided in international law. Two theses are advanced. First, there is a misunderstanding in international law about what legislation is. This can be seen, for instance, in the popular claim that the United Nations Security Council has begun to “legislate” on the international plane. The second thesis attempts to specify how this misunderstanding has come about; I suggest that international law writing tends to evince a more basic mistake about what law is. If these two theses are true, the literature on international law-making stands in need of revision.

Keywords: legislation, law-making, sources of law, international law

JEL Classification: K00, K10, K19, K30, K33, K39, K40, K49

Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation

Hameed, Asif, Legislation and Law on the International Plane (2015). University of Cambridge Faculty of Law Research Paper No. 35/2015. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2614614 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2614614