International Law: A European Perspective

Many law schools on the European continent teach courses on public international law in English, whether at the bachelor or masters level. However, nearly all of the available international law textbooks are written or edited by academics from the English-speaking world, mostly with a common law background, and UK academics in particular. Inevitably and understandably, these textbooks focus mainly on practice from common law countries, particularly from the United States and the United Kingdom, and much less on ’continental European’ perspectives, as well as on the increasingly important interactions between international and European law. This textbook fills a void by offering for the first time a comprehensive European perspective on the classic doctrines of international law (responsibility, jurisdiction, sources, etc). That perspective includes the EU, the Council of Europe, and their respective Member States. Special attention is devoted to the reception of international law in the EU legal order and the EU’s international legal action, and to the dialectical relationship between general international law and the European Convention on Human Rights (as applied by the European Court of Human Rights). The European perspective espoused by the authors is informed by a substantial amount of European practice at the level of States and supranational institutions. In particular, the authors make wide use of decisions of the General Court and the Court of Justice of the European Union, the European Court of Human Rights and national courts in Europe. The authors also make use of practice at diplomatic and executive level, which includes EU statements or common positions on issues of international law and coordinated international law practice emanating from committees such as the Council of Ministers of the EU’s Working party on International Public Law (COJUR). Moreover, the authors build on years of research and teaching in international law.