Technique and practice of international rule-making: review of the materials of the ESIL International conference

Abstract

The article presents the main trends in rule-making practice in the field of international law, which were summarized on the basis of expert reports and abstracts at the Conference of the European Society of International Law (ESIL) in autumn of 2021. The authors of the article are ESIL members and have previously made reports at its forums. In this review, they analyzed the materials of thematic seminars of “working groups”, “agoras” and “forums” of the Conference. The debates touched upon the impact of the digital revolution on the form and content of international lawmaking, discussed the influx of informal norms and standards in this area, maintaining the integrity of national systems and rationality of “soft law”, spread of the so-called “expert codifications”, ensuring the harmonization of domestic legality and lawmaking of non-state actors, taking into account corporate and civil-public interests in the law-making process, international negotiations and practice of states, demand for interdisciplinary paradigms, approaches and methods in situations of collisions of legal regimes and formation of “living law”. The authors of the review conclude that modern international law is under-going significant “digital recalibration” and is developing on the basis of new technologies from hyperformalism to hyperfactualism.

Keywords

• international law
• rule-making
• soft law
• codification
• international treaty
• practice of states
• actors
• expert community
• international organizations