Making Sense of Soft Law, by E. HEY, Professor at the Erasmus University Rotterdam

These lectures explore how soft law instruments contribute to the development of normativity. They illustrate that the (re)construction of normativity is the outcome of the interaction between soft law instruments and between soft law instruments and hard law. These interactions take place in institutional settings, established by both soft and hard law instruments. These institutional settings, in turn, provide the decision-making process by way of which substantive normativity is (re)constructed at various points in time and in a variety of institutional settings. Three categories of soft law instruments are identified: soft law instruments that provide input for developing legally relevant infrastructure, soft law instruments that are part of legally relevant infrastructure, and soft law instruments that are part of regulation. In legally relevant infrastructure, the aim is to regulate the activities of States. In regulation, the aim is to regulate human activity, even if the addressees of the regulations are States.

The Inviolabilities of the Diplomatic Mission, by G. R. B. GALINDO, Associate Professor at the University of Brasilia

Not only persons, but also the diplomatic mission enjoys inviolabilities that require from the receiving state a duty of abstention and a duty of protection.

This course aims to depict different inviolabilities of the diplomatic mission (the premises, the archives and documents, and the official correspondence) and similar regimes of protection (communication and the diplomatic bag). Moreover, the application of circumstances precluding wrongfulness on what regards the inviolabilities of the diplomatic mission and similar regimes of protection as well as the relationship between the inviolability of the diplomatic premises and diplomatic asylum are scrutinized.

It is contended that the inviolabilities of the diplomatic mission are a fundamental and essential piece of past and present diplomatic law and international law in general.

Le droit international du desarmement : entre idealisme et realisme, par J. M. GOMEZ-ROBLEDO, juge a la Cour internationale de Justice

Ce cours retrace l?histoire du droit international du desarmement nucleaire, tant dans la perspective des accords bilateraux entre les deux grandes puissances dotees de l?arme atomique (les Etats-Unis et l?Union Sovietique suivie de la Federation de Russie), que dans celle des traites multilateraux, a vocation universelle et regionale, qui ont pour but la non-proliferation et la cessation de la course aux armements nucleaires en partant d?approches differentes mais complementaires. Il en ressort la conviction de la communaute internationale d?oeuvrer en vue de l?interdiction de l?arme nucleaire, afin de parvenir a un monde libre de l?arme qui a la capacite, comme nulle autre, d?eliminer toute forme de vie sur la planete. Dans cette quete, la nature unique de cette arme et ses consequences humanitaires catastrophiques conduisirent a l?emergence d?une opinio juris communis qui preceda l?etablissement de la regle de droit conventionnel au bout de laquelle son interdiction est finalement realisee.