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The Relationship Between Municipal Law And International Law

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This has been one of the recurring topics in debates among scholars and students of international law. Establishing the relationship between municipal law and international law is important when resolving disputes. In certain circumstances, there are conflicts arising oftentimes on which of the two laws has to be applied. It is a pivotal question on what rule should prevail____ Municipal Law or International Law. There are two traditional theories(doctrines) approaching the relationship between domestic law and international law: the monist theory and dualist theory. Monist view perceives the two laws as unitary because they are of the same unit and legal order(Malanczuk, 2004). They argued thatinternational law could be directly applied in the domestic level and that international law is supreme over municipal law because the former may render the latter null and void if it (municipal law) does not conform to international law (Kelsen, 1958; Kelsen,1966). On the other hand, dualist view believes that the two laws exist independently from each other as they are two separate legal systems and highlighting the state sovereignty (Malanczuk, 2004). In other words, these schools of thought are discussing issues of incorporating or transforming the rules of international law into the municipal law of the respective countries with their national courts that are tasked to do so (Abashidze,2013). This monist-dualist controversy was described by Fitzmaurice (1957) as “unreal,
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