Change and stability in international law-making

Abstract

Although the international community is changing at an increasingly rapid pace (chiefly at the instigation of developing and Socialist countries), some of its basic features remain unaffected or at least are being eroded only marginally, due to strong resistance from the traditional "actors". Thus, there is a deep rift between the "old" and the "new" patterns of the community, the cause of continual tension. The motivations and ramifications of this cleavage must be grasped, if one wishes to understand where the international community is heading at present. This theme was chosen as the focus of two international colloquia held at the European University Institute, Florence. We decided to look at this phenomenon from a particular vantage point: that of the mechanisms existing at world level for creating, updating, modifying or eliminating the "rules of the game" of the international community: in short, those mechanisms which are traditionally called "the sources of law". We thought that this area, if looked upon as a dynamic process, could show, as if seen through a prism, the resistance of the "old" and the innovations of the "new". We thought that by examining the microcosm of the law-creating processes, we might perhaps better understand some general trends of the macrocosm of the world community.