Judge Yusuf is originally from Somalia and has served as a judge at the ICJ—based in The Hague, the Netherlands—since 2009; he was the court’s president from 2018 to 2021.
He is a member of the Institut de Droit International and a former chief legal counsel to various intergovernmental organizations, including UNESCO and UNIDO. He is the founder of the African Institute of International Law in Arusha, Tanzania, and of the African Yearbook of International Law.
The William W. Bishop Lecture is the marquee international and comparative law lecture at Michigan Law, welcoming luminaries who share their perspectives and expertise with students and professors.
The lecture, presented every five years, honors William Bishop, ’31, a 30-year member of the Michigan Law faculty who was one of his generation’s foremost international law scholars and who helped establish the Law School as a leader in the then-nascent field.
Following are six takeaways from Judge Yusuf’s lecture.
1. We live in an interdependent world that needs international law.
Judge Yusuf emphasized from the outset the growing interdependence among states in which a complex web of international legal rules facilitates and informs a range of international activities, from cross-border transportation to multilateral trade and investment.
However, he said, the challenges of today require that we move beyond international law that is designed to deal with interstate relations on the basis of reciprocal interests or bilateral transactions.
“We need to move to a global law that can safeguard the common interests of humanity,” he said.
“Unless we act collectively in confronting pandemics, erosion of biodiversity, and climate change, the development of a normative framework that can inform and inspire global action cannot be facilitated.”
2. Collective actions and rules started with the creation of certain international organizations.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, regional legal systems prevailed in various parts of the world. European public law was the most elaborate regional system.
However, Judge Yusuf told the audience, it was still a world in which oppression and colonization were deemed not only permissible, but desirable; war was considered a legitimate form of settling conflicts; and nations were treated as unequal and a hierarchy of sovereignty existed.
Things started to change with the creation of the League of Nations in 1920 and of international organizations such as the International Telegraphic Union (which later became the International Telecommunications Union), the Universal Postal Union, and the International Labour Organization.
Judge Yusuf noted that early interactions among nations on the basis of collectively legislated rules and principles as well as institutions, based on an emerging interdependence, paved the way for the next phase of international laws.
3. A new era of international rule of law took hold, aided by the Charter of the UN.
With the end of World War II came an era of emancipation of people around the world.
This era was marked by the emergence of more than 100 countries, by economic development and growth for many nations, and by the universalization of international law. It was during this period that the rule of law took hold for the first time at the international level and the judicial settlement of disputes found its rightful place in the international arena.
Making this change possible, from a legal point of view, was the Charter of the United Nations; Judge Yusuf particularly mentioned a “trinity of principles” of the UN Charter:
- “First, the reaffirmation in the Charter of the United Nations of faith by the peoples of the United Nations in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, and in the equal rights of man and woman and of nations large and small.
- “Second, the affirmation in the UN Charter of the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples.
- “Third, prohibition by the UN Charter of the use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state. In other words, the prohibition of war and of the use of war as a tool for settling disputes among nations.”
Judge Yusuf concluded, “I would add to this trinity of principles and provisions of the UN Charter the creation of the International Court of Justice, not because I am a member but because without a court of law, there can be no rule of law.”
4. International law has consolidated to respond to growing interdependence.
The era following the creation of the UN Charter has seen an increase in the rules applicable to the relations between states in a wide range of fields, from aviation and telecommunications to labor standards. Hundreds of thousands of treaties have established cooperation among the states and consolidated the rule of law at the international level, including in the field of human rights. Several treaties of a humanitarian character were also adopted.
Judge Yusuf pointed out that the unprecedented growth in the rules of international law and the institutionalization of multilateral cooperation through intergovernmental organizations constitute the basis through which an international rule of law was gradually consolidated and the emancipation of colonized peoples—as well as peace, progress, and prosperity—have been built in the past 79 years.
The three essential characteristics of the international rule of law, he noted, are legitimacy, predictability, and equality before the law.
5. All countries must confront challenges together: common interest, common concern, and shared value.
Judge Yusuf emphasized the profound change of the “requirements of international life,” as the International Court of Justice called them in its advisory opinion in Reparation for Injuries Suffered in the Service of the United Nations in 1949, which is due to the increasing interdependence among peoples and nations.
He recalled the analogy used by Professor Eyal Benvenisti, an Israeli international lawyer, who likened the global community to a high-rise building housing 200 residents.
Benvenisti wrote in his article “Sovereigns as Trustees of Humanity: On the Accountability of States to Foreign Stakeholders”: “The sense of interdependence is heightened when we recognize the absence of any alternative to this shared home, of any exit from this global high rise.”
For almost 200 countries of the world, there is no escaping the necessity to confront challenges together and to establish legal rules that reflect shared values and common interests and address common concerns. The concepts of common interest, common concern, and shared values have found their way into the language of international law, said Judge Yusuf.
“Their articulation in international instruments and international jurisprudence, together with the emergence of rules such as those embodying erga omnes obligations or jus cogens, can pave the way for the global law.”
6. The international legal system is resilient and continues to matter in our daily lives.
“We live in a world in which multilateralism is sometimes challenged…and the use of force between states, prohibited by the UN Charter, appears to be growing again,” Judge Yusuf said. However, “we should not despair; we should not throw up our hands in horror and declare the failure or the collapse of the international legal order.”
Instead, we need to realize that the international rule of law remains alive.
Even though it is sometimes breached, it is still capable of providing security and predictability at an international level. Judge Yusuf contradicted the Roman statesman Cicero, who famously stated that “in times of war, the law falls silent.”
“Thanks to the UN Charter and to the existence of a rule of law at the international level, law no longer stands mute in the midst of wars,” said Judge Yusuf. “The ICJ has several cases before it relating to the war in Ukraine and to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It has already pronounced itself on some of the issues pertaining to these wars.”
The ICJ, he added, has stated the law as it always has and has not held back its views, nor has it condoned human suffering, the loss of life, and the destruction arising from wars. Other UN organs, in particular the General Assembly and the International Criminal Court, have done the same.
Moreover, international law has a larger scope than addressing wars; it also affects the daily lives of ordinary people. He shared examples of laws that provide for, among others, speedy transmission of telecommunications from one country to another, international air travel, and even the regulations governing export of fresh fruit.
“In light of this reality, I am always surprised when I hear that international law no longer matters or that international law has failed or is no longer observed by states,” he said. Could similar doomsday remarks be made about domestic law when mass murders are committed in a country? Judge Yusuf challenged the audience to find their own answers to such questions.
Finally, he concluded with a quote from Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish on peace and the fallacy of war as well as a quote from Carl Sagan’s book Pale Blue Dot, also about war and the tiny planet Earth.
“‘The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena,’ Sagan wrote. ‘Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. It underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.’”
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