The Principle of Rational Decision-Making: As Applied to the Identification of Normative Conflicts in International Law

The resolution of normative conflicts is a recurring issue for the application of international law, more so now than ever before. To help lawapplying agents to justify decisions resolving a conflict between two norms,international law provides a host of different conflict rules. As several studies reveal, to apply such a conflict rule, law-applying agents often have todraw on political considerations. If international law gives priority to lexspecialis over lex generalis, for example, it does not provide any criteria thatcan be used for classifying particular rules as either general or special. Forthis reason, rather than putting conflict rules to practical use, internationalcourts and tribunals often choose the easy way out, simply denying that aconflict exists. As the author of this article argues, this is not a very effectivestrategy, since a decision determining the existence of a conflict is no lessdependent on political considerations. The author believes that although adecision determining the existence of a conflict often cannot be founded oninternational law simpliciter, it should always withstand the test of rationalreason. He ends the article by suggesting a mode of reasoning that wouldseem to meet this concern