Municipal law

Municipal law is an international law term used to denote the national, domestic, or internal law of a sovereign state.

Municipal law includes not only law at the national level, but law at the state, provincial, territorial, regional or local levels. While, as far as the law of the state is concerned, these may be distinct categories of law, international law is largely uninterested in this distinction and treats them all as one. Similarly, international law makes no distinction between the ordinary law of the state and its constitutional law.

Early modern English versus American views

Sir William Blackstone, the English jurist and professor, defined municipal law as: "A rule of civil conduct, prescribed by the supreme power of the state, commanding what is right and prohibiting what is wrong." (Commentaries, 44.) However, the definition is not without controversy. James Wilson, American Founder Father and Supreme Court Justice, in his 1790 lecture On municipal law at the University of Pennsylvania states: “I think, therefore, I may now venture to say, that both in his definition of municipal law, and in his opinion concerning the convertibility of the legislative and the sovereign authority, Sir William Blackstone stands unsupported by authority. Is he supported by reason and by principle? By neither, in my humble opinion.” (Lectures I, v.) Since Blackstone was both widely and deeply read by the Founding generation in America, the controversy is of some importance. Despite the fact that Wilson's contrary stance may have contributed to his loss of historical footing, one may profit or gain a solid understanding of the classical view concerning municipal law by consideration of the view of each or by contrasting that of both.

Conflicts between municipal law and international law

States sometimes attempt to argue that they should be excused from international legal obligations on the grounds that their constitutions do not permit them to fulfill them, or that the fulfillment of them is the responsibility of local jurisdictions over which international law does not control (see LaGrand case).

However, Article 27 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties provides that, where a treaty conflicts with a state's municipal law (including the state's constitution), the state is still obliged to meet its obligations under the treaty. Article 46 of the Vienna Convention provides a single exception, where a state's expression of consent to be bound by a treaty was a manifest violation of a “rule of its internal law of fundamental importance”.

References

• Luc Reydams Universal Jurisdiction: International and Municipal Legal Perspectives, (Oxford Monographs in International Law), Oxford University Press (Paperback 2004) ISBN 978-0199274260.