Community interests have become one of the most consequential yet conceptually unsettled ideas in contemporary international law. In his 1994 lecture ‘From Bilateralism to Community Interest in International Law’, Bruno Simma argued that “there probably exists no other ‘community interest’ so far detached from individual State interests as that of enforcing human rights worldwide.” Three
decades on, the concept has steadily gained attention in both scholarship and practice: Proceedings before the International Court of Justice concerning allegations of genocide based on erga omnes
(partes) obligations, the advisory opinions on climate change, the establishment of the Special Tribunal for the Crime of Aggression against Ukraine, and the expansion of jus cogens by the IACtHR,
all point to the growing recognition of interests that transcend bilateral relations and concern the international community as a whole.
And yet, despite this growing attention, the theoretical foundations and operationalization of norms protecting community interests remain underexplored. Who constitutes the ‘international community as a whole’, whose interests are at stake? Which interests qualify as sufficiently fundamental to transcend bilateral State relations? To what extent do international courts and tribunals differ in the way they conceptualize, interpret, and protect these interests? And what is the conceptual link to international human rights law?
The workshop organizers invite submissions examining how community interest norms are conceptualized, addressed by international courts and tribunals, and how the nexus between serious human rights violations and breaches of community interests norms can be assessed.