РУАЭСТ (RUAEST)
THE INTERPRETIVE APPROACH TO INTERNATIONAL LAW: A POSITIVIST VIEW
The interpretive approach to international law, specifically the evolutionary interpretation of international law, is a powerful instrument in the determination and subsequent development of its norms. The interpretive process should not be guided by abstract political morality, but by the general rules of interpretation laid down in Articles 31-32 of the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, which require the parties to act in good faith and determine the common intention of the parties. The right to interpret international legal norms may be exercised not only by international judicial bodies such as the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), etc., but also by international treaty monitoring mechanisms such as the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR). Such an approach can be conducive to the elaboration of a new broad interpretation of the norms laid down in the original documents (e.g. the ECHR has eventually come to regard the right to respect for private and family life as comprising the right to an ecologically sound environment) or the setting apart of specific norms from more general ones (e.g. a number of separate human rights have developed out of the right to health, thanks to the interpretive activities of the CESCR and other human rights bodies).