Treaty Interpretation and the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties ― 30 Years on

Interpretation has always had a prominent place in international adjudication, yet its role has been further enhanced during the last few decades with the expansion of the regulatory range of international law and the proliferation of international judical bodies. In such a diverse new world and celebrating the 30 years since the entry into force of the VCLT, this Volume on Treaty Interpretation attempts a much needed re-examination of the issues of treaty interpretation.

In the first part of this Volume the authors focus on the VCLT itself and examine the nature of interpretation and the normative content of the relevant provisions. In the second and third parts of the Volume the analysis turns to the characteristics of treaty interpretation as applied within two of the most important sectors of international law i.e. that of trade and investment law on the one hand and of human rights on the other. Such a two-tiered approach allows for a more comprehensive understanding of the content and function of the principles of interpretation as enshrined in Articles 31-33 of the VCLT.

Malgosia Fitzmaurice holds a chair of public international law at the Department of Law, Queen Mary, and is the Editor-in-Chief of the ICLR. She specialises in international environmental law and the law of treaties and has published extensively on these fields.
Olufemi Elias MA (Oxon) LLM (Cantab) Ph.D (London) is currently a Visiting Professor at Queen Mary and the Executive Secretary of the World Bank Administrative Tribunal. He has worked as Legal Adviser at the UNCC and as Senior Legal Officer at the OPCW.
Panos Merkouris LLM (Athens & UCL) is a Ph.D candidate at Queen Mary and a scholarship holder from the Greeks State Scholarship Foundation. Mr. Merkouris is the Managing Editor of the Managing Editor of the ICLR and co-editor of the Research Handbook on Interntional Environmental law (Edward Elgar, 2010).