This title focuses on the interpretative methodologies and principles employed by international human rights organs in applying and developing human rights norms. It explores the role of various interpreters, including international, regional, and national courts, in shaping the meaning and scope of human rights. The section examines the methods of interpretation used by human rights bodies, such as textual, contextual, purposive, and evolutionary approaches, and the challenges in ensuring consistency and coherence across different jurisdictions. It also discusses the purposes of interpretation, including the protection of human rights, the development of international human rights law, and the promotion of judicial dialogue and coherence. By analyzing the interpretative practices of human rights organs, this title aims to provide a deeper understanding of the dynamics of human rights interpretation and the factors influencing the application of human rights norms in diverse legal and cultural contexts.

This part focuses on the interpretative methodologies and principles employed by international human rights organs in applying and developing human rights norms. It explores the role of various interpreters, including international, regional, and national courts, in shaping the meaning and scope of human rights. The sections examine the methods of interpretation used by human rights bodies, such as textual, contextual, purposive, and evolutionary approaches, and the challenges in ensuring consistency and coherence across different jurisdictions. It also discusses the purposes of interpretation, including the protection of human rights, the development of international human rights law, and the promotion of judicial dialogue and coherence. This part delves into the international legal regime governing human rights and freedoms, covering states’ general obligations, the conditions for engaging state responsibility, and the regime for the enjoyment and exercise of rights and freedoms. By analyzing the interpretative practices and legal obligations, this part aims to provide a deeper understanding of the dynamics of human rights interpretation and the factors influencing the application of human rights norms in diverse legal and cultural contexts.

This chapter explores the methods and purposes of interpreting norms of international human rights law. It covers the use of treaty guidelines, purposive interpretation, evolutionary interpretation, normative interaction, regional and international consensus, and the pro persona principle. The chapter examines how these interpretative methods are applied by human rights bodies to ensure the effective implementation of human rights norms. It also discusses the challenges in balancing different interpretative approaches and the role of interpretation in advancing the development of international human rights law. The chapter highlights the importance of adopting a dynamic and context-sensitive approach to interpretation to address emerging human rights issues.

Chapter 4 analyses the three selected challenges facing international tribunals – managing change, reviewing State conduct for compliance with international law, and dispute resolution – in the International Court of Justice (ICJ)’s environmental case law. The ICJ has repeatedly adapted aging treaty frameworks given relevant developments in international law and has also faced the problem of change in relevant facts. While the terminology of a standard of review is not firmly established in the ICJ’s case law, the underlying functional problem – concerning the intensity of an international tribunal’s scrutiny of determinations made by domestic authorities – is clearly present. Although three-step proportionality analysis is not entrenched in the ICJ’s case law, the Court has repeatedly used a reasonableness-based test that operates similarly to least restrictive means testing. Finally, the ICJ often adjudicates in a forward-looking, facilitative manner, seeking to assist the parties to manage their relationship after adjudication. Throughout, the chapter reflects on how the ICJ’s practices are shaped by its institutional features, such as its lack of any compulsory jurisdiction.

Chapter 2 analyses the three selected challenges facing international tribunals – managing change, reviewing State conduct for compliance with international law, and dispute resolution – in World Trade Organization (WTO) adjudication, focusing on environmental disputes. WTO tribunals have often been faced with potential changes in international legal norms or changes in relevant facts. The chapter analyses the approach to the standard of review developed under the Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures. While this approach avoids WTO adjudicators determining questions of scientific correctness, it requires them to decide what counts as an adequate risk assessment process. The chapter then analyses the necessity tests developed by WTO adjudicators for scrutinising measures that pursue a permissible regulatory aim but also restrict a treaty-protected interest in trade liberalisation. Finally, the chapter interrogates an aspect of the WTO’s ‘chapeau jurisprudence’ that many commentators have read as a desirable example of international tribunals engaging in a procedural form of scrutiny and pushing regulating States to consider affected foreign interests.

Today’s platformization of services was an “unforeseen” phenomenon when the WTO was established. However, through the pro-liberalization WTO jurisprudence developed in past decades, the GATS market access commitments have played more than a marginal role in the story of the emergence of datafication, leaving the door open for big tech companies. Without question, platforms’ associated datafication practices influence human society, in terms of their beauty as well as their peril. The perilous side therefore calls into question whether international trade commitments negotiated in the pre-digital age should be sustained in this datafied world. In the FTA context, Chapter 3 argues that listing nonconforming measures under the Cross-Border Trade in Services Chapter represents the most critical step in reserving a state’s “digital sovereignty.” Such inscriptions ensure that a state does not risk committing to future services and associated delivery means that did not exist at the time of treaty negotiations. Nonetheless, market access obligations do not prevent states from adopting domestic regulations in pursuit of legitimate national policies. Digital trade liberalization must be accompanied by the introduction of data regulations to address the potential risks and harms.

This chapter addresses the unbalanced protection of private rights in land and maritime boundary-making. Based on the observation that private rights are more effectively protected on land, the study argues for a reconstruction of the maritime delimitation framework so that private interests in disputed areas are taken into account. The similarities between land and maritime delimitation processes and the common need for the protection of private interests in both settings allow for the application of legal analogy. This allows certain principles which apply in land delimitation to be extended to maritime delimitation. Against this background, the chapter provides a series of short- and long-term means which can be implemented by states and judicial bodies performing maritime delimitation, as well as by policymakers engaged in the development of international law.