 The legacy of the Lotus finding is still very much present with us. However, the underlying understanding of international law that it conveyed was very much controversial from the start. The 12 judges making the court in that case were equally divided six to six and the case was only decided because of the casting vote of the president of the court at the time Max Huber from Switzerland. The more international law developed over time and the rules multiplied, the less the permissive nature of the international legal order seemed convincing. The doctrinal debate on the subject has been going on for years and it is very likely to continue. Is there an urgent need to revisit and to reconsider the Lotus finding or to overturn it and opt for a prohibitive understanding of international law? Well probably not, as the abundance of rules in contemporary international law renders that debate even more theoretical today than what it was back in 1927. Indeed because treaties and rules abound, it will almost always be possible to connect any state action with one rule or another so that the states will usually act and give legal justification for their action out of abundance of quotient. They will not just say there is no rule and I just do what I like. This being said it is interesting to see if the Lotus understanding of international law has a permissive legal order has survived in the case law of the International Court of Justice. In that regard a close reading of contrasting excerpts from two more recent cases is interesting and please take a look at them after this video.