Bjorge Erik, Miles Cameron (eds.) Landmark Cases in Public International Law

Hart Publishing, 2017. — 637 p. — ISBN: 978-1-84946-788-9; 978-1-50991-878-2; 978-1-50991-879-9.The Landmark Cases collected in this book serve at least two other useful purposes.
They remind one in the first place that no dispute going to judicial settlement ever consists of one single isolated legal issue. Indeed, one of the most striking indicators of international law as a legal system lies in the way in which international disputes, most especially when they are subjected to the fierce analytical discipline of forensic argument, show themselves as entailing the simultaneous application and the interplay of different legal concepts each with its relevance to particular aspects of the matter under dispute.
The second important reminder is that disputed legal issues arise out of facts on the ground. By this, I don’t wish merely to restate the platitude that an important part of any tribunal’s task lies in finding and stating the facts. I mean rather that each of the Landmark Cases collected in this book consists, and necessarily so, of the application of law, as found by the tribunal, to a set of facts. So that it is at one’s
peril that one gets into the way of thinking of any given landmark decision as having established ‘a principle,’ without paying the right sort of regard to how the enunciation of the principle emerged and within what context.