 Let us turn now to general principles as a source of international law. You may remember that among the sources of international law listed by article 38 of the ICJ Statute, paragraph 1c refers to, I quote, the general principles of law recognized by civilized nations. This sentence is taken from the Statute of the Permanent Court of International Justice. And as you know, that statute was drafted in 1920 and this explains the reference to civilized nations, which sounds very Eurocentric and pretty outdated by now, since all nations are today presumed to be equally civilized. Back in 1920, about a century ago, international law was not as much developed as it is today. And therefore the problem that the drafters of the PCIJ Statute were facing was the issue of non-liquid. That is the situation where the court would be asked to decide a case, but would not find any treaty nor any rule of customary international law to be applied to the facts of the dispute. And a court of law cannot simply say, I have jurisdiction, but I cannot judge this case because there is no law to be applied. So the concept of general principles of law was introduced to fill the gaps, as it were, the gaps that could be left in case there would be no relevant treaty or custom. Instead of leaving the court the possibility of inventing new rules, the drafters directed the court to look at general principles of law recognized by civilized nations. What does that mean? Well, it is very clear that in 1920 the drafters of the PCIJ Statute meant to refer to rules of domestic law that are common to the main legal systems of the world, civil law, common law, Chinese law, etc. In other words, the legal principles that are common to domestic legal systems are because they are common, considered to be rules of international law. And as you can see, consent serves again as the foundation of international law. True, there is no formal consent as with treaties and neither is there implicit consent nor acquiescence as with customary rules. But consent exists nevertheless because of the convergence of domestic laws. If states want the same rule for themselves, Article 38 paragraph 1c somehow presumes they do not object that such rule, common to their respective domestic legal systems, be considered by the court as a rule of international law in the form of a general principle of law. At the same time, general principles transcend the issue of consent understood in a very narrow and positivistic way. Indeed, if similar rules are to be found in domestic legal systems all over the world, is it not because they somehow derive from and express some essential requirements of law which do not depend on voluntarism? In that sense, general principles of law would be close to natural law, reflecting legal necessities stemming from the common conscience of mankind wherever. In other words, through general principles of law, the drafters of the PCIJ statute managed to reconcile two opposite schools of jurisprudence and legal theory, positivism and naturalism. This being said, if one wants to go beyond some very elementary common rules making general principles, the problem with such construction is that it would require the court to embark on some lengthy comparative law exercises. This could prove very difficult due to the increase in the number of states and of the domestic legal systems that would have to be taken into account and compared. Moreover, it would considerably slow down the procedure if conducted in a very rigorous manner. Well, hopefully, and because general principles were conceived as having a subsidiary character and apply in the absence of treaty or custom, the extraordinary development of international law through treaties and through customary rules has limited the need to rely on general principles within the meaning of Article 38 to find rules filling the gaps, as it were, in the system of international law. However, if you read carefully judgments of international courts and tribunals, notably those of the International Court of Justice, you will notice that the words general principles are very often used. But most of the time, by those words, the courts actually refer to customary international law, and instead of referring to general principles of law, as in Article 38, the judgments very often refer to general principles of international law. By this, it is the importance or the well-established character of the customary rule at stake that is emphasised. Different words are used, but they point to rules having the nature of customary international law. By the same token, Article 2 of the UN Charter, for instance, lists principles according to which the UN must act, and those principles include customary rules. Also, the United Nations General Assembly adopted in 1970 a declaration on principles of international law concerning friendly relations and corporations among states, which the International Court of Justice has considered to reflect customary international law. The court has notably said so, first in the Nicaragua v. the United States case, and then in the advisory opinion on the unilateral declaration of independence in respect of Kosovo. So there is nothing problematic in using the words principles or general principles when actually speaking about custom. Sometimes the words general principles of international law are used to refer to an axiomatic principle of international law, a principle without which international law would not be what it is. For instance, the equal sovereignty of states, or pactas un servanda, etc. But there again, such basic principles have also a customary character. In the following readings, you will see how the words general principles are used in various ICJ cases, and this will serve to illustrate this video.