Contemporary International Law-making: A Reassessment of the Theory of Formal “Sources” of International Law

The growing complexity of the process of formation of contemporary International Law is a challenge to its scholarship, nowadays perhaps to a greater extent than in the past. Article 38 of the Statute of the Permanent Court of International Justice (PCIJ) and the International Court of Justice (ICJ) provides that, in the settlement of disputes submitted to it, the Court will apply international conventions, international custom and general principles of law, to which are added, as "subsidiary means", judicial decisions and doctrine; the Court is, at last, entitled to decide a question ex aequo et bono, "if the parties agree thereto". Unilateral acts have been conceived as manifestations of a subject of International Law to which this latter attaches certain consequences. In recent years an increasing attention has been turned to the element of opinio juris in the very formation of contemporary international law. Keywords:contemporary international law; International Court of Justice (ICJ); international custom; Opinio Juris; Permanent Court of International Justice (PCIJ); unilateral acts