Forms of Recognition

Unrecognised subjects in international law / edited by Władysław Czapliński, Agata Kleczkowska ; reviewiers: Artur Kozłowski, Roman Kwiecień. Warszawa : Scholar Publishing House, INP PAN, 2019, s. 79-109.

East meets West : the Idea of European Integration and Security

Challenges, risks and threats for security in Europe / herausgeber: Andreas Kellerhals, Tobias Baumgartner. Kölliken : buch & netz, 2019, s. 25-41.

The Sources of General International Law in the Recent Works of the International Law Commission

Polish Yearbook of International Law 2019, t. XXXIX, s. 37-60.

The present text describes the attitude toward sources of law in the recent works of the International Law Commission (ILC) on custom, general principles of law, and jus cogens (with special emphasis on reports of the respective special rapporteurs). The three main tasks of the text are to verify whether the ILC rapporteurs: grasped the essence of unwritten sources (reality-concern); preserved the coherence of views when referring to different topics (coherence-concern); and last but not least allow states to have the decisive voice as regards the set of their obligations (sovereignty-concern). The author notes the nominal strict attachment of the ILC to two-element nature of custom as a general practice recognized as law. Though in fact it should be a good message for states, this strict attitude of the ILC seems not to be based on a real stress test. It seems to ignore the reality of lawyers and even international judges referring to several customary norms without the slightest attempt to verify the true existence of both the two elements of custom – namely practice and opinio juris. What is more, the ILC does not see any problem with calling all general principles as sources of law. What is overlooked is the element of state consent to be bound by several presumed general principles. This is qualified by the author as a threat to state sovereignty – with states being pressured to follow some patterns of conduct to which they have not given their consent.

[Book Review: Lukasz Gruszczynski (ed.), The Regulation of E-cigarettes: International, European and National Challenges, Edward Elgar Publishing, Cheltenham: 2019, pp. 320]

Polish Yearbook of International Law 2019, t. XXXIX, s. 291-295.

One of the most important trends in the law studies is connected with the legal evaluation of new economic and/or social phenomena and technological developments. The book edited by l. Gruszczynski1 refers to a matter which has elements of all of them, although it describes just one group of products. E-cigarettes seem to be a niche subject, perhaps no more interesting than thousands of other products (at least other than water, food and energy). It may however be astonishing for scholars engaged in the traditional way of approaching international law (subjects of law, its sources, responsi-bility etc.) how many interesting perspectives, unexpected legal conclusions, and real challenges are connected with e-cigarettes. It must be stressed that term “e-cigarettes” is just an everyday shorthand term; the scientific term used in the book is Ends (i.e. Electronic nicotine delivery systems). For reasons of simplicity the former term will be used here, however.