The municipal codes of well over a dozen countries expressly provide for the application of the general principles of law in the absence of specific legal provisions or of custom, and the Statute of the International Court of Justice stipulates that 'the general principles of law recognised by civilised nations' constitute one of the sources of international law to be applied by the Court; but the exact meaning and scope of this section of the Statute have always been a subject of controversy amongst international lawyers. In this printing of his classic 1953 work, Professor Bin Cheng...
The municipal codes of well over a dozen countries expressly provide for the application of the general principles of law in the absence of specific l...