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LAW 6342: Issues in International & Domestic Oil & Gas Law: International Law

Prepared for Professor John S. Lowe’s Issues in International & Domestic Oil & Gas Law course, Dedman School of Law, Southern Methodist University (Fall 2022)

Definitions

International law

Public international law – body of rules and procedures intended to govern relations between nation state

Private international law – rules that determine where, and by whose law, controversies involving more than one jurisdiction are resolved, and how foreign judgments are enforced

Foreign law – law of specific foreign countries (or of inter-governmental organizations such as the EU)
Comparative law – study of the differences and similarities among national legal systems

Sources of International Law

According to the Statute of the International Court of Justice art. 38, June 26, 1945, 59 Stat. 1055, 33 U.N.T.S. 993:

Treaties – international conventions, whether general or particular, establishing rules expressly recognized by the contesting States;
Customary international law – international custom, as evidence of a general practice accepted as law;
General principles of law – the general principles of law recognized by civilized nations;
Judicial decisions and teaching of “publicists” – judicial decisions and the teachings of the most highly qualified publicists of the various nations, as subsidiary means for the determination of rules of law.