Recueil Des Cours: Collected Courses of the Hague Academy of International Law 2005 (Academie de Droit International) (English and French Edition)

This volume contains Part 1 of the General Course on Public International Law given by A.A. Cancado Trindade. The Author develops his Leitmotiv of identification of a corpus juris increasingly oriented to the fulfilment of the needs and aspirations of human beings, of peoples and of humankind as a whole. With the overcoming of the purely inter-State dimension of the discipline of the past, international legal personality has expanded, so as to encompass nowadays, besides States and international organizations, also peoples, individuals and humankind as subjects of International Law. The growing consciousness of the need to pursue universally-shared values has brought about a fundamental change in the outlook of International Law in the last decades, drawing closer attention to its foundations and, parallel to its formal sources, to its material source (the universal juridical conscience). The Author examines the conceptual constructions of this new International Law and identifies basic considerations of humanity permeating its whole corpus juris, disclosing the current processes of its humanization and universalization. Finally, the Author addresses the construction of the international rule of law, acknowledging the need and quest for international compulsory jurisdiction, in the move towards a new jus gentium, the International Law for humankind. This text is contained in volumes 316 and 317 of the Collected Courses."