Opposability in International Law
Date & Time: May 31, 2025 (Saturday) 12:00-13:00
Venue: Room 901, 9/F Cheng Yu Tung Tower, The University of Hong Kong
Language: English
(In-person event)
Abstract:
Professor Eirik Bjorge will speak on the fundamental principle of opposability in international law. In the decentralized system of international law, where there is no constitutional authority, it is left to each State to determine disputed matters of fact or law for itself on its own authority and according to its own judgement. In such a system, differently to many domestic legal systems, the most practically important question to be determined is not whether, in an objective sense, a legal act is or is not generally valid. It is instead whether, as far as the relationship between the states involved is concerned, the act is opposable by one state to another. Opposability is the capacity of a rule, a legal act, a right, or a legal fact to produce international legal effects vis-à-vis a state, including a state or states unconcerned by the obligations that arise directly from it. Rather than depending on whether an act is valid as against all the world, opposability operates in the relations between pairs of states. Opposability is concerned with whether the act in question may be opposed to the state at issue; the basis for that opposability will be whether or not the state has given its recognition, tacitly or explicitly, of the act concerned.
Speaker:
Eirik Bjorge is Professor of International Law at the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom. He is the author e.g. of The Evolutionary Interpretation of Treaties (OUP 2014) and is currently working on a monograph on the general principles of law. He practises international law before international courts and tribunals and advises governments on questions of international law, especially the law of treaties, the law of the sea, and international dispute settlement.
Chair:
Ying Zhu is Assistant Professor of Faculty of Law at The University of Hong Kong.
This is an in-person only event for the audience. Prior registration is required. Please visit https://bit.ly/4kdcLUQ to register. For inquiries, please email Louisa at ccl921@hku.hk.
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