Automatically binding

Now here’s a difficult post to answer!

First, is it really the question that you wish me to explain? It’s a quite straight forward question, on the face of it – “Which of the following types of international law is not automatically binding on nations?”

I believe that it’s more likely that you want an explanation of the answer – but you haven’t given me the answer that you want me to explain!

I’ll do my best

Option A – UN Conventions – on the face of it, it would be easy to assume that all the states that are recognised by the United Nations would be bound by UN Conventions. But that’s not right. To be bound by a UN Convention, a member state must itself adopt that convention and not all of them adopt all the conventions

A prime example is where the United States of America (how can you not love them?) will not adopt the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination against Women

Option B – International Treaties – where a treaty is signed, the signatories to that treaty are bound by the treaty. However, some treaties are automatically binding (self-executing treaties) whereas some are non-self-executing treaties. These latter types require the member state to change their own domestic law to bring the treaty into force

In addition, it’s an availability for a signatory to sign up to a treaty ‘with reservations’. Those reservations seek to exclude or minimise the effect of some of the treaty proposals so, in that respect, even though a member state may be a signatory to an international treaty, it doesn’t automatically follow that that state is immediately / automatically / completely bound by the terms of the treaty

Option C – UN Model Laws – as the title suggests, these are model pieces of legislation, prepared by the United Nations, where member states are recommended to adopt their own legislation to conform with the Model Laws, typically with a time-limit within which the member state must operate

In this way, we can argue that UN Model Laws are NOT automatically binding on UN member states – changes to domestic law must first be implemented

So! A) – Conventions automatically binding? Only if adopted by the UN recognised states, individually, with the opportunity for individual states to opt out

B) – International Treaties automatically binding? Only if signed without reservation and even then, only if they are self-executing. If they are non-self-executing, they need to be formally adopted within the state’s own domestic laws

C) – UN Model Laws automatically binding? Only after having been incorporated into the states’ own existing domestic law

Technically, I suppose, you could argue that none of these options is AUTOMATICALLY binding on nations but the Model Law option appears to be most appropriate

Bear in mind also that not all ‘nations’ are recognised by the United Nations and, in that respect, none of the above could be claimed to be automatically binding on those non-recognised nations

Is that any clearer?

If pushed, my answer would be option C)

OK?

You’re welcome – I just hope that it’s made it clearer for you

Cheers

Mike