The Impact of Human Rights Law on General International Law

Traditional international law aims to protect the values and interests of states. The rapidly increasing corpus of international human rights law (including international humanitarian law and international criminal law) increasingly challenges the basic tenets of general international law. In order to become accepted as the law of the world community, general international law needs to better reflect the values and interests of a wider range of actors, including the individual.

This volume provides the first comprehensive examination of the impact of international human rights law on general international law. It considers areas including the structure of international obligations, the formation of customary international law, treaty law, immunities, state responsibility and diplomatic protection. The authors trace the extent to which concepts emanating from international human rights law are being incorporated by the guardians of traditional international law: the International Court of Justice and the International Law Commission.

The book contains work carried out by the Committee on International Law and Practice of the International Law Association (ILA) over a period of four years, incluing the Committee's Final Report on the Impact of International Human Rights Law on General International Law and in-depth contributions by Committee members on key areas of international law.

Menno T. Kamminga is Professor of International Law at Maastricht University and Director of the Maastricht Centre for Human Rights. He is also Chair of the Netherlands Government Advisory Committee on International Law and a member of the Netherlands Government Advisory Committee on Human Rights, and Co-rapporteur of the International Law Association Committee on International Human Rights Law and Practice.

He was a Member of the United Nations Human Rights Committee from 1997-2004, and has been United Nations Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism since 2005. He has been Chair of the Committee of Human Rights Law and Practice of the International Law Association from 1997-2008 and Vice President of the International Association of Constitutional Law since 2007.