International Law in Domestic Courts

The research project "International Law in Domestic Courts" is aimed to respond to the needs of domestic judges lawyers and other practitioners scholars and academics dealing with international law aspects who want to access a broad range of international law aspects in a comprehensively processed format. Based on a bottom-up approach the academic significance of the project rests on carefully annotated compilation of domestic cases decided by national courts dealing with international law in the form of a comprehensive online-database. The project is aimed to analyse the existing national case law in a systematic way. Two main categories of cases will be included: (a) cases relating to the reception and application of international law in the national legal order and (b) cases relevant to the identification and interpretation of rules of international law. The first category of cases will be included provided they are of sufficient relevance in the light of international law. A useful criterion measuring "relevance" is whether the case can be expected to be cited by international courts by scholarly work or as authority for a particular point of international law. The second category will be included if they confirm well-established rules of international law or point to the development of new international legal principles. Materially these cases concern for instance principles of jurisdiction immunities State succession responsibility general principles (good faith, estoppel) or the law of treaties. In terms of functional fields covered fields will for instance include aspects of human rights law humanitarian law international criminal law environmental law and investment law. This project will help to intensify international cooperation and to further deepen the links of the University of Vienna to other international universities thus contributing to the overall significance of this research institution. This proposal intends to apply the results of the research project International Law in Domestic Courts in a new context and it aims to deepen their impact in academic and practical terms. The first research project identified and established parameters which served to make available, process and present international law decisions of domestic courts. Its most important result was to render operational a database of fully annotated cases. The current proposal aims at extending this approach and concentrates on new substantive elements. In particular, it seeks to evaluate the further development of international law as evidenced in the cases contained in the database. At least two central topics in international law are thereby addressed: First, the project will analyse how, in judicial practice, sources of international law are referred to in the domestic context and whether they are interpreted differently over time. Second, it will deal with the potential conflict of the domestic and the international legal order. It will provide evidence of how various domestic courts deal with pertinent disputes, notably when it comes to deficient domestic measures implementing international law; put into operation the specific knowledge accumulated during the processing of the cases contained in the database. Different forms of implementation measures are envisaged, such as intensified publication activities in the form of case-notes or thematic collections of contributions that refer to the processed cases. It is equally be envisaged to add to the work that is carried out at the Section for International Law of the University of Viennas Law School in relation to case reports and publications that build on cases. All such measures require a close scientific exchange of the academics involved. The proposed follow-up project will thus build on the strong international network that has been created and will increase the standing of the University of Vienna as an international research facility.

This project has primarily dealt with the role of national courts in the interpretation and application of international law. In the framework of an international research cooperation network (among others with universities in Washington D.C., Amsterdam, and Pretoria) work was pursued for the better understanding of how national case-law contributes to the development and consolidation of international law. Under the leadership of the project manager, who since 2015 is co-editor-in-chief of the database "International Law in Domestic Courts" (ILDC), Austrian and foreign court decisions on international legal issues were commented upon and incorporated into the database. Based on this research, a number of further specific research projects have been carried out. Central was the large-scale commentary on the two Conventions on the Privileges and Immunities of the United Nations and its specialized agencies which was published in spring of 2016 as an "Oxford Commentary" by Oxford University Press. It is based on the outcomes of a number of workshops held in Vienna and on the data available in ILDC. Furthermore, the General biannual Conference of the European Society of International Law (ESIL) "International Law and ..." took place in autumn 2014 in Vienna under the scientific direction of the project leader. This culminated in the publication "International Law and ... - Boundaries of International Law and Bridges to Other Fields and Disciplines" in autumn 2016 and at the same time coincides with the completion of the project.