The present and future of jus cogens

This book gathers the contributions presented to the first edition of the Gaetano Morelli Lectures, held in the Spring of 2014. In presenting this initiative, also on behalf of my colleagues, Paolo Palchetti and Beatrice Bonafè, I wrote: “The aim of the Lectures is to offer conceptual tools for appraising controversial knots of international law in its continuing development. There is a lot of sense, in our view, for doing this. International law is one of the branches of legal science where the pressing need for change goes hand in hand with the persistencen of its basic legal paradigms. It is this unique blend of theory and practice, of tradition and innovation, which makes international law so challenging and ultimately explains its ongoing intellectual fascination”. This sentence condenses our shared view of the Lectures and, more generally, our vision of legal research, as an incessant collective reflection capable to shake continuously our most consolidated ideas and preconceptions. This is the reason which led us to choose jus cogens as the topic for the first edition of the Lectures. Jus cogens is not only a “classical accomplished” of international law. It is, first and foremost, a litmus test for its future development, situated at the crossroad from where diverse perspectives depart: one which leads back to the traditional bilateralist conception; another, at the other end of the spectrum, which leads to new and still unexplored territories, where the common values of mankind unfold all their potentialities. Jus cogens appears thus to be a fascinating yet treacherous topic, perpetually in search of a legal paradigm able to capture all its infinite implications.