Law’s Determinability: Indeterminacy, Interpretative Authority, and the International Legal System

Authority claims remain rooted in the antecedent existence of a degree of indeterminacy, in particular in the international legal system, in which a lack of systematicity characterises how international actors claim and exercise authority. The indeterminacies in international law give rise to certain practices and mechanisms designed to cure such deficiencies, and in particular these practices are observed by law-applying and law-interpreting bodies, of which international courts and tribunals tend to be the exemplars. These ‘authority claims’, far from being scattered and random claims for legitimation, in fact give a peek into international law’s structure as a legal system with mechanisms of determinability, these mechanisms being designed to privilege coherence and order. The discretion revealed in the practices of interpretation is in fact the outcome of interpretative practices, not their cause. Accordingly, the sustainable existence of a legal system remains rooted in the existence, identification, and study of its law-applying officials, whose authority depends in part on their recognition by a wider professional or epistemic community of international lawyers. The social and communitarian foundations of authority, therefore, complement any claims to interpretative authority engendered by the legal system itself.