Yale Law School
Given the trend of increasing global economic integration, many regional agreements—especially the African Union—seek to follow a similar model. In the EU, sovereign nations have gathered their authority in a system of courts and the European Parliament. These institutions are allowed the ability to enforce legal norms both against or for member states and citizens in a manner which is not possible through public international law. As the European Court of Justice noted in its 1963 Van Gend en Loos decision, European Union law constitutes “a new legal order of international law” for the mutual social and economic benefit of the member states. The sources for public international law development are custom, practice and treaties between sovereign nations, such as the Geneva Conventions.
- These are laid down in codes such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the European Convention on Human Rights and the U.S.
- In contrast to English common law, which consists of enormous tomes of case law, codes in small books are easy to export and easy for judges to apply.
- Investigating, apprehending, charging, and trying suspected offenders is regulated by the law of criminal procedure.
- One definition is that law is a system