Book Chapter on Customary International Law

I am happy to share the publication of my book chapter ‘Addressing the Chronological Paradox of CIL,’ in the Cambridge University Press volume edited by Marina Fortuna, Panos Merkouris, Andreas Follesdal, Kostia Gorobets, Pauline Westermann, and Geir Ulfstein for the TRICI-Law project at the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen.

In this chapter, I try to disentangle the chronological paradox of customary international law (CIL). The paradox is that for a new customary rule to be created, states must believe that the law already obligates the behaviour specified in that rule (opinio juris). However, the behaviour in question can only be legally required once that rule has been created. As a result, creating a new customary rule would be impossible, or at the very least, an incoherent process.

This chapter is the result of research I did as a PhD candidate at the Foundations of Law Dept. at Maastricht University Faculty of Law, and the Faculdade de Direito – Universidade de São Paulo, with the generous support of CAPES – Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior.

The full volume is open access; check out the other chapters in this amazing publication. Many thanks to the editors and organisers of the TRICI-Law project.

Here is the link for accessing the paper. And this is the link for the full book.