Based on doctoral thesis, University of Cambridge, 2015. --Page vii.

One of the most prominent and urgent problems in international governance is how the different branches and norms of international law interact and what to do in the event of conflict. With no single 'international legislator' and a multitude of states, international organisations and tribunals making and enforcing the law, the international legal system is decentralised. This leads to a wide variety of international norms, ranging from customary international law and general principles of law, to multilateral and bilateral treaties on trade, the environment, human rights, the law of the sea, etc. Pauwelyn provides a framework on how these different norms interact, focusing on the relationship between the law of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and other rules of international law. He also examines the hierarchy of norms within the WTO treaty. His recurring theme is how to marry trade and non-trade rules, or economic and non-economic objectives at the international level.

In The Right to Food and the World Trade Organization’s Rules on Agriculture, Rhonda Ferguson explores the relationship between the right to food and agricultural trade. The analysis is situated within the context of debates surrounding the fragmentation of international law.

Conventionally, international legal scholarship concerned with norm conflicts focuses on identifying how international law can or should resolve them. This book adopts a different approach. It focuses on identifying those norm conflicts that law cannot and should not resolve. The book offers an unprecedented, controversial, yet sophisticated, argument in favour of construing such irresolvable conflicts as legal dilemmas. Legal dilemmas exist when a legal actor confronts a conflict between at least two legal norms that cannot be avoided or resolved. Addressing both academics and practitioners, the book aims to identify the character and consequences of legal dilemmas, to distil their legal function within the sphere of international law, and to encourage serious theoretical and practical investigation into the conditions that lead to a legal dilemma. The first part proposes a definition of legal dilemmas and distinguishes the term from numerous related concepts. Based on this definition, the second part scrutinises international law's contemporary norm conflict resolution and accommodation devices in order to identify their limited ability to resolve certain kinds of norm conflicts. Against the background of the limits identified in the second part, the third part outlines and evaluates the book's proposed method of dealing with legal dilemmas. In contrast to conventional approaches that recommend dealing with irresolvable norm conflicts by means of non liquet declarations, judicial law-making, or a balancing test, the book's proposal envisions that irresolvable norm conflicts are dealt with by judicial and sovereign actors in a complementary fashion. Judicial actors should openly acknowledge irresolvable conflicts and sovereign actors should decide with which norm they will comply. The book concludes with the argument that analysing various aspects of international law through the concept of a legal dilemma enhances its conceptual accuracy, facilitates more legitimate decision-making, and maintains its dynamic responsiveness.

Peremptory Norms of General International Law (Jus Cogens): Disquisitions and Dispositions is a collection of contributions on various aspects of jus cogens in international law.

Master's Thesis from the year 2010 in the subject Politics - Topic: Public International Law and Human Rights, grade: A plus, Jawaharlal Nehru University , course: Master of Philosophy (M.Phil.), language: English, abstract: From the beginning of the twenty-first century the international community started addressing the issue of fragmentation of international law. In 2000, the International Law Commission (ILC) decided to include the topic “[r]isks ensuing from the fragmentation of international law” into its long-term programme of work. This initiative raises some basic questions: is international law a fragmented system? If it is so, what is the problem with the fragmentation? and how can the problem be resolved? This dissertation mainly revolves around these three major issues. It assumes that today’s fragmented international law is part of historical evolution or process. In contemporary times, the term ‘fragmentation’ is commonly used to refer to the slicing up of international law ‘into regional or functional regimes that cater for special audiences with special interests and ethos’. The most notable functional regimes are international trade law, environmental law, human rights law, humanitarian law, law of the sea and so on – when there is a collision between these regimes – than the conflict of norms becomes an unavoidable consequence – because each regime seeks favorable treatment towards its own. The absence of normative and institutional hierarchy in international law means that the evolution of such regimes is perceived by some as posing a threat to the coherence, effectiveness and predictability of international law. Others see these regimes as contributing to the development of international law. To respond to the problem of fragmentation, the ILC examined the regimes in detail and tentatively concluded that these specialized legal regimes are merely informal labels with no normative value per se – hence, it viewed that they are all within or part of broader territorial domain of general international law – and codified some of existing conflict resolving techniques to solve the problem of conflict of norms. However, the proposed techniques solve the conflict of norms only within regimes but not across regimes. The question remains as to how to solve the norm conflict across regimes?

Master's Thesis from the year 2010 in the subject Politics - International Politics - Topic: Public International Law and Human Rights, grade: A plus, Jawaharlal Nehru University, course: Master of Philosophy (M.Phil.), language: English, abstract: From the beginning of the twenty-first century the international community started addressing the issue of fragmentation of international law. In 2000, the International Law Commission (ILC) decided to include the topic "[r]isks ensuing from the fragmentation of international law" into its long-term programme of work. This initiative raises some basic questions: is international law a fragmented system? If it is so, what is the problem with the fragmentation? and how can the problem be resolved? This dissertation mainly revolves around these three major issues. It assumes that today's fragmented international law is part of historical evolution or process. In contemporary times, the term 'fragmentation' is commonly used to refer to the slicing up of international law 'into regional or functional regimes that cater for special audiences with special interests and ethos'. The most notable functional regimes are international trade law, environmental law, human rights law, humanitarian law, law of the sea and so on - when there is a collision between these regimes - than the conflict of norms becomes an unavoidable consequence - because each regime seeks favorable treatment towards its own. The absence of normative and institutional hierarchy in international law means that the evolution of such regimes is perceived by some as posing a threat to the coherence, effectiveness and predictability of international law. Others see these regimes as contributing to the development of international law. To respond to the problem of fragmentation, the ILC examined the regimes in detail and tentatively concluded that these specialized legal regimes are merely informal labels with no normative value per se - hence, it viewed that they