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

Yannick Radi, Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies - Leiden Law School

6/11/2014
(Original Publish Date: 6/1/2012)

The paper analyses the dynamic procedures which work at 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 which works for normative coherence in contexts characterized by cooperation and the heterogeneity of interests. Introducing this concept, the paper insists on the fact that it is the procedural nature of the dialogue which is crucial to reach normative coherence. Drawing 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. Besides, the paper points out the predominance of normative coherence as well as of its ‘guarantor’, i.e. procedure that its author considers as the cornerstone of legal certainty in the cooperative context of the international society.