Conflict of Norms - Conflict of Laws - Conflict of Systems? On the Conditions of Normative Conflict in International Law

在谈到规范冲突或接口冲突时，许多法律文献侧重于可能的解决办法，即应如何解决不同规范和/或制度之间的冲突。解决这一问题有一系列备选办法：一些人声称，应通过解释最大限度地实现协调；另一些人则认为，需要制定二级规范，告诉我们如何解决冲突；还有一些人认为，任何将国际法设想为统一制度的企图都是徒劳的，并主张不是松散的协调就是明确的政治辩论。我们的项目主要关注的不是接口冲突的标准化解决方案。相反，它退后一步，着眼于独立第三方参与者是如何构建规范冲突的。我们的指导性直觉是，没有必要将某种规范的重合理解为规范或接口冲突。也许同一星座有时被视为冲突，有时则不被视为冲突。在整个项目中，我们打算审查广泛的司法和准司法裁决，以期更好地了解在哪些情况下，在特定情况下潜在的界面冲突会变成明显的界面冲突。换句话说，我们问：第三方行为者在什么条件下解决潜在的界面冲突，他们在解决或避免这些冲突方面的争辩策略是什么？我们打算仔细审查各种第三方行为者在确定或拒绝存在接口冲突时所提供的理由。通过这一办法，该项目试图确定国际法中可能发生的接口冲突的类型，以说明其偶然性。我们将把我们的调查限制在横向层面上，即声称可能具有全球适用性的法律制度(例如多边条约制度和习惯国际法)之间的冲突，我们将审查第三方参与确定和解决这种冲突的法院和准司法机构。

When talking of normative conflicts or interface conflicts, much legal literature focuses on possible solutions, i.e., how conflicts between different norms and/or regimes ought to be resolved. A range of options exists to address this question: some claim that a maximum of harmonization through interpretation ought to be achieved; others argue that there is a need to develop secondary norms that tell us how a conflict might be resolved; still others believe that any attempt to conceive of international law as a unitary system is futile and advocate for either loose coordination or explicit political contestation. Our project is not primarily concerned with normative solutions to interface conflicts. Rather, it takes a step back and looks at how normative conflicts are constructed by independent third-party actors. Our guiding intuition is that there is no necessity in understanding a certain coincidence of norms as a normative or interface conflict. Perhaps the same constellation is sometimes seen as a conflict and sometimes not. Throughout the project, we intend to examine a wide range of judicial and quasi-judicial decisions with a view to better understanding under which conditions a latent interface conflict in a given situation materializes into a manifest interface conflict. Put differently, we ask: Under which conditions do third-party actors address latent interface conflicts, and what are their argumentative strategies in either solving or avoiding them? We intend to scrutinize the rationale provided by various third-party actors in establishing or rejecting the existence of an interface conflict. Through this approach, the project seeks to establish a typology of possible interface conflicts in international law that accounts for its contingency. We will limit our inquiry to interface conflicts on the horizontal level, i.e., between legal regimes that claim potential global applicability (e.g., multilateral treaty regimes and customary international law), and we will examine third-party involvement, courts and quasi-judicial bodies, in the identification and resolution of such conflicts.