Tasioulas: Custom, Jus Cogens, and Human Rights

John Tasioulas (King's College London – Law) has posted Custom, Jus Cogens, and Human Rights (in Custom’s Future: International Law in a Changing World, Curtis A. Bradley ed., forthcoming). Here's the abstract:

The paper presents a moral judgment-based account of customary international law (MJA), according to which opinio juris embodies a moral judgment, and moral judgment is involved in the interpretative process of of determining whether a customary norm has come into being. The MJA is shown to fit with the service conception of the legitimacy of international law, as opposed to a consent-based view. The second half of the paper considers the implications of the MJA for human rights as both customary norms and as norms of jus cogens.