Systems of law usually establish a hierarchy of norms based on the particular source from which the norms derive. In national legal systems, it is commonplace for the fundamental values of society to be given constitutional status and afforded precedence in the event of a conflict with norms enacted by legislation or adopted by administrative regulation; administrative rules themselves must conform to legislative mandates, while written law usually takes precedence over unwritten law and legal norms prevail over nonlegal (political or moral) rules. Norms of equal status must be balanced and reconciled to the extent possible. The mode of legal reasoning applied in practice is thus naturally hierarchical, establishing relationships and order between normative statements and levels of authority.

International organizations (or IOs)—intergovernmental entities established by treaty, usually composed of permanent secretariats, plenary assemblies involving all member states, and executive organs with more limited participation—are a twentieth-century phenomenon having little in common with earlier forms of institutionalized cooperation, including those in the ancient world. The story of how, shortly after the turn of the last century, the Euro-American lawyers that dominated the field of international law sought to transcend the chaos of war by “moving to institutions” has been told elsewhere and needs no repeating here. David Kennedy, Martti Koskenniemi, and David Bederman, among others, have described the disparate individuals, separated by nationality, juridical philosophy, and competing “idealist”/“realist” schools of thought, who nevertheless shared a messianic, quasi-religious, and coherent “internationalist sensibility” that sought to institutionalize multilateral diplomacy with a view to promoting civilization and progress. Kennedy locates the move to international organization in turn-of-the-century reformist aspirations for parliamentary, administrative, and judicial mechanisms that, in the Victorian language of the day, would convert “passion into reason.” By the time this Journal was established, the Congress of Vienna’s concert system had provided a model for an incipient (albeit only periodic) pseudo-parliament; diverse public administrative unions and river commissions suggested the possibilities for international administration and even the interstate pooling of funds; and the Permanent Court of Arbitration presaged an international judiciary.

Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have exerted a profound influence on the scope and dictates of international law. NGOs have fostered treaties, promoted the creation of new international organizations (IOs), and lobbied in national capitals to gain consent to stronger international rules. A decade ago, Antonio Donini, writing about the United Nations, declared that “the Temple of States would be a rather dull place without nongovernmental organisations.” His observation was apt and is suggestive of a more general thesis: had NGOs never existed, international law would have a less vital role in human progress.

The last fifteen years have seen a proliferation of peace agreements. Some 50 percent of civil wars have terminated in peace agreements since 1990, more than in the previous two centuries combined, when only one in five resulted in negotiated settlement. Numerically, these settlements amount to over three hundred peace agreements in some forty jurisdictions. International standards have even begun to regulate peace agreements. United Nations guidelines, guidelines and recommendations of the secretary-general, and Security Council resolutions have all normatively addressed peace agreements: both the processes by which they are negotiated and their substance, particularly with relation to accountability for past human rights abuses.

The International Law Commission held its fifty-seventh session in Geneva from May 2 to June 3, and from July 11 to August 5, 2005. The Commission continued its work on shared natural resources, reservations to treaties, responsibility of international organizations, unilateral acts of states, and fragmentation of international law. It began work on the effect of armed conflict on treaties and expulsion of aliens, and decided to begin work next year on the obligation to prosecute or extradite. It took no further action for the time being on diplomatic protection or on international liability for transboundary harm, pending the receipt of comments from governments on the texts adopted on first reading in 2004.