According to
jus cogens, statutes should not be placed on crimes against humanity, such as the sexual slavery by the Japanese military during World War II, and comfort women and their advocates should still be able to file civil and criminal cases in court.
Pacta sunt servanda -- treaties must be kept -- is as much a principle of international law as
jus cogens -- compelling higher law that overrides treaty law.
Indeed, the non-retroactivity principle is considered to be so fundamental for granting the certainty of the legal relations among States, that according to the ILC's Commentary to Article 13, even the emerging of a new
jus cogens rule "does not entail any retrospective assumption of responsibility" (12).
In the 21st century, death sentences and executions should be legally classified as forms of torture, argues Bessler, and the law, evolving as it always does, should move toward a universal,
jus cogens norm universally prohibiting the death penalty's use.
It is indeed necessary for the Latvian state to deliver a strong demonstration of real compliance with the prohibition of torture and inhuman or degrading treatments, a rule of public International Law universally accepted as
jus cogens.
government officials accused of acts violating
jus cogens from civil
While the norm prohibiting the use of force in Article 2(4) of the UN Charter was previously envisioned to be binding as against member States of the UN only, the norm has crystallized into what is known as a peremptory norm of international law or
jus cogens norm.
Alli sostiene que el quebrantamiento de normas fundamentales, cuya validez se relaciona con la nocion de
jus cogens, no puede ser protegido por las reglas relativas a la inmunidad.
16) Eventually genocide as a
jus cogens norm, therefore a fundamental overriding principles of international law from which no derogation is ever permitted, was defined, clarified and incorporated into international law to the point that the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court (ICC) is now based upon that original work.
Cherif Bassiouni, an internationally recognized expert whom I had the privilege to meet in ystanbul a few years ago, argues that crimes against humanity are part of
jus cogens, and as such constitute a non-derogable rule of international law.
Concepts with universal appeal such as
jus cogens and erga omnes, Kratochwil argues, cannot solve the fragmentation problem, since they ignore both the deep-seated value conflicts and the variety of rights and practices that structure social reality.
Yet, whether human rights norms, as such, take precedence over WTO law is not immediately obvious, unless, of course, the human right in issue is a
jus cogens norm.
