Municipal law.html



Municipal law is an international law term used to denote the national, domestic, or internal law of a sovereign state.^[1] Municipal law includes not only law at the national level, but law at the state, provincial, territorial, regional or local levels. While, as far as the law of the state is concerned, these may be distinct categories of law, international law is largely uninterested in this distinction and treats them all as one. Similarly, international law makes no distinction between the ordinary law of the state and its constitutional law.

Conflicts between municipal law and international law

States sometimes attempt to argue that they should be excused from international legal obligations on the grounds that their constitutions do not permit them to fulfill them, or that the fulfillment of them is the responsibility of local jurisdictions over which international law does not control (see LaGrand case).^{citation needed}

However, Article 27 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties provides that, where a treaty conflicts with a state's municipal law (including the state's constitution), the state is still obliged to meet its obligations under the treaty. Article 46 of the Vienna Convention provides a single exception, where a state's expression of consent to be bound by a treaty was a manifest violation of a “rule of its internal law of fundamental importance”.^[2]

Notes

References

• Luc Reydams Universal Jurisdiction: International and Municipal Legal Perspectives, (Oxford Monographs in International Law), Oxford University Press (Paperback 2004) ISBN 978-0199274260.

Further reading

• Rule of Law: The Story of Human Rights in World History International Law Background website of the International and Area Studies at Berkeley University