Civil and Customary Law.pptVIP

Short Review of Questions from Chapter 4 Dualism International Law and municipal law are two separate and discrete systems. International law CANNOT make itself effective in the domestic legal order. Municipal law CANNOT impose itself on the international legal order. A state cannot rely on its municipal law to repudiate an international obligation. Therefore… It is therefore possible under dualism that an obligation can be legally binding in international law and have effect in the international legal system, but have no legal force in one or another municipal legal system, before a domestic court, because of some aspect of municipal law. Monism The theory that the international legal order and all the national legal orders are components of a single universal legal order in which international law has a certain supremacy Self-executing Treaties versus non-executing treaties Articulated by Judge Marshall as “equivalent to an act of the legislature, whenever it operates of itself without the aid of any legislative provision.” A treaty is non-self-executing if it does not, by itself effect the object to be accomplished, but has to be executed by the sovereign power of the respective parties. If the treaty requires an act of the legislature in order to have it function in domestic law is a non-executing treaty. Example: Asakura v. Seattle US Supreme Court heard a case from a Japanese national residing in the US because the city of Seattle prohibited her from opening a pawn shop citing a city issuance forbidding foreigners from obtaining licenses. The Supreme court ruled that this violated the 1911 Japanese-American friendship, commerce, and navigation treaty. The treaty stated that “citizens or subjects of each of the High Contracting parties shall have liberty to enter, travel and reside in the territories of the other to carry on trade… upon the same terms as native citizens or subjects.” The difference between how common law and civil law cou