RG 2409/1: Conflict of Norms – Conflict of Laws – Conflict of Systems? On the Conditions of Normative Conflict in International Law (SP 06)

The project investigates how independent third-party actors construct normative conflicts in the concrete setting of international dispute resolution. The guiding intuition is that there is no necessity in understanding a certain coincidence of norms as a normative or interface conflict. Perhaps the same constellation is sometimes seen as a conflict and sometimes not. Throughout the project, a wide range of judicial and quasi-judicial decisions will be examined with a view to better understanding under which conditions a latent interface conflict in a given situation materializes into a manifest interface conflict. Put differently, the project asks: Under which conditions do third-party actors address latent interface conflicts, and what are their argumentative strategies in either solving or avoiding them? This question is approached through scrutinizing the rationale provided by various third-party actors in establishing or rejecting the existence of an interface conflict. Through this approach, the project seeks to establish a typology of possible horizontal interface conflicts in international law that accounts for its contingency, while at the same time gaining insight into argumentative strategies of third-party actors in the identification and resolution of such conflicts.