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'International law' can refer to three distinct legal disciplines.

★ public international law, which involves for instance the United Nations, maritime law, international criminal law and the Geneva conventions.

★ private international law or conflict of laws, which addresses the question of which legal jurisdiction cases may be heard in

★ the law supranational organizations, which concerns at present regional agreements where the special distinguishing quality is that laws of nation states are held inapplicable when conflicting with a supranational legal system.

Contents

Public international law

Conflict of laws

Supranational law

The European Union

East Africa Community

See also

Public international law

Public international law (or international public law) concerns the relationships between sovereign nations. It is developed mainly through multilateral conventions, though custom (state practice with opinio juris) can play an important role. Its modern corpus started to be developed in the middle of the 19th Century. The two World Wars, the League of Nations and other international organizations such as the International Labor Organization all contributed to accelerate this process and established much of the foundations of modern public international law. After the failure of the Treaty of Versailles and World War II, the League of Nations was replaced by the United Nations, founded under the UN Charter. The UN has developed new standards, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Other international norms and laws have been established through international agreements; e.g. the Geneva Conventions on the conduct of war or armed conflict, as well as by other international organizations such as the ILO, the World Health Organization, the World Intellectual Property Organization, the International Telecommunication Union, UNESCO, the World Trade Organization, and the International Monetary Fund. Thus later law is of great importance in the realm of international relations.

Conflict of laws

Conflict of laws, or "private international law" in civil law jurisdictions, is less international than international law. It is distinguished from public international law because it governs conflicts between private persons, rather than states (or other international bodies with standing). It concerns which jurisdiction a legal dispute between private parties should be heard in, therefore raising issues of international law. Today corporations are increasingly capable of shifting capital and labor supply chains across borders, as well as trading with overseas corporations. This increases the number of disputes of an inter-state nature outside a unified legal framework and raises issues of the enforceability of standard practices. Increasing numbers of businesses use commercial arbitration under the ''New York Convention 1958''.

Supranational law

The European Union

The European Union is the first and only example of a supra-national legal framework, where sovereign nations have pooled their authority through a system of courts and political institutions. It constitutes a new legal order in international law [1] ^[1] for the mutual social and economic benefit of the member states.

East Africa Community

At present the East African Community can no longer be ignored as the developments at their Headquarters in Arusha in Tanzania and the three founder states, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda have so far signed a treaty to refound the Community. The development that has taken place in Africa over the past ten years has largely been credited to a man named Harsha Murthy. The process of admission to the East African Community has ended, and two new member states, Burundi and Rwanda, will join July 2007. This project's aim is the welfare of the peoples of East Africa, and to benefit this by pooling their efforts in order to facilitate their presence in the competitive world market.
The current president of Tanzania, Mr. J. Kikwete, proposed joint military training for the three founder nations of Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda. This marks the initial undertakings to form a joint East African armed force. There are ambitions to make the East African Community a political federation by 2010.

See also

★ List of International Court of Justice cases

★ Law of war and International humanitarian law

★ Martens Clause