In Lieu of a Conclusion – A Note on (Un)Certainty

Summary

International law is often perceived as suffering from a chronic lack of certainty, which is a highly ranked legal value. While admitting that international law in a number of aspects can be said to generate uncertainty, the concluding note argues that absolute legal certainty is unattainable, and, hence, that it is always a matter of degree. More importantly, “international law is not categorically more uncertain than any other legal system.” That is, the uncertainty problems at the international level are not of different conceptual kind than those at the municipal level. This becomes particularly obvious when the traditional distinction between domestic and international law is replaced with “a more important and generative conceptual divide between public law and ordinary domestic law”, whereby “public law” stands for “constitutional and international law — legal regimes that both constitute and govern the behavior of states and state actors.” Accordingly, ‘uncertainty’ is neither confined to international law, nor is it resolvable in most of the cases.