Rule of Law at the National and International Levels

This new book aims to enhance understanding of the interactions between the international and national rule of law. It does so by demonstrating that the international rule of law is not merely about ensuring national compliance with international law. International law and institutions (e.g., international human rights treaty-monitoring bodies and human rights courts) respond to national contestations and show deference to the national rule of law. While this flexibility might come at the expense of the certainty of international law, the practice suggests that the international rule of law in relation to the national legal order seems to allow flexibility, national diversity, and pluralism. The essays in this volume are set against the background increasing conflict between international and national legal norms. International law and institutions prescribe standards concerning, for instance, human rights, crimes, trade, and investment, which are likewise regulated by national law. The national implementation of those standards is reviewed by international institutions, such as human rights courts, criminal tribunals, investment arbitration tribunals, and non-judicial treaty-monitoring bodies. The UN and the World Bank also support domestic implementation of international standards by directly engaging in the rebuilding of constitutions and legal systems in post-conflict societies. This collection captures these domestic contestations, and the international responses to them, not in terms of fundamental conflicts between international and national law, but rather as an essential component of the 'international rule of law'. Morevoer the book shows that international law and institutions do not always command blind national obedience to international law, but incorporate a process of adjustment and deference to national law and policies that are protected by the rule of law at the national level. Behind international deference, there lies the problem of legitimacy and accountability deficit on the part of international law and institutions. Study of the feedback of national legal practices into the international rule of law highlights how international law and institutions pay deference to, and rely upon, political legitimacy attached to the national rule of law. The volume fills a gap in the literature, situating the national legal order, not merely as the venue for implementation, but also as the agent for the critical revision of international law and of the universality of policies behind it, and synthesising these national and international perspectives in terms of the rule of law.