Section of Department of Internalional Law and Law of European Union - public international law, law of EU
Particularities of Interpretation in International and EU Law
(Department of International and European Law)
The purpose of the section is to identify particularities in interpretating international and EU law as compared with general interpretation rules and methods used in national law. Both international law and the EU law are very specific legal systems not only for the nature of their rules but also from the point of view of their textual expression.
Some examples of possible specific issues to be presented (non-exhaustive list):
- Creative interpretation v. development of a new rule through the decision making of international or EU courts (judicial activism, judicial creativity). Is it possible to set up a clear borderline between an extensive interpretation of an existing rule and a latent modification of that rule by the interpreting court?
- Relationship between the interpretation of a treaty provision by the state-party and its violation. Is it possible to avoid the violation of a treaty provision by means of a specific and more favourable interpretation by the „violating“ party referring to it?
- Specific interpretation methods and techniques in international or EU law – „competition“ of different methods, the role of certain methods (e.g. the teleological one).
- Is there in practice a hierarchy of interpretation methods (for international treaties or EU law)? Does the selection of an interpretation method depend on the particular branch of international law?
- How to guarantee the uniformity of interpretation of treaty provisions by all parties?
- International treaty:reservations v. interpretative declarations
- Language problems of interpretation of international treaties and EU law. Comparison of different language versions, settlement of differencies between them.
- Subjects interpreting international treaties:in relations between States (parties, international organs) and also within a particular State (courts, Ministry of foreign affairs etc.) or international organization (e.g. EU).
- External factors relevant to the interpretation by international or European courts (mutual influencing between different courts).
- Relevance of national law to the interpretation of international law and vice versa. Obligatory interpretation of national law according to EU law (indirect effect of EU directives) – its limits.
- Interpretation and fragmentation of international law. Can interpretation be helpful for preventing fragmentation?
- Avoiding the conflict between international treaties through their appropriate interpretation.
- Interpretation of customary international law.
- Competence of the EU Court of Justice to interpret EU law, binding effect of interpretative judgments.
- Any other coherent and relevant topic directly related to some specific feature of interpretation in international or EU law.
Important notice: This time the subject of the present section is narrowly focused on the interpretation in international and/or EU law only. Participants are free to choose any subject, provided that it falls directly into the scope of this section. Contributions not meeting this condition will not be accepted and contributors will be recommended to try another section. Creative contributions developing directly some of the aspects of the subject are intended to be included into a monograph entitled Interpretation in International and EU Law. Other contributions will be published in the Conference Days of Law proceedings as usually.
All potential participants are kindly asked to send to the organizer, at least 4 weeks before the conference, a brief abstract of their contribution of some 10 lines, in order to allow us to decide on their inclusion into the present section.
- Scientific Guarantor:
- prof. JUDr. Vladimír Týč, CSc.
- Organizational Guarantor:
- Mgr. et Mgr. Linda Janků, Ph.D.
- Languages:
- English, Slovak, Czech