Conflicts between international paradigms: hierarchy versus systemic integration

Abstract This article gives an overview of two competing paradigms in the practice of judicial organs for the resolution of norm conflicts, namely the paradigm of a human rights based hierarchy versus the paradigm of systemic integration or conflict avoidance. Judicial practice indicates that norm conflicts typically manifest themselves between human rights obligations on the one hand and other categories of international obligations on the other. Do judicial organs resolve such norm conflicts in a manner that favours human rights obligations? If so, this would support the view in the literature that the international legal order is increasingly operating within a paradigm of hierarchy, with human rights at its apex. The article addresses this question based on the results of a study conducted by 10 authors who have analysed the practice of domestic, regional, supranational and international courts in dealing with norm conflicts between human rights, on the one hand and the other sub-regimes of public international law mentioned above, on the other (de Wet and Vidmar 2011). The article argues that judicial practice reveals no clear or consistent patterns of a human rights based hierarchy in international law can currently be induced from the manner in which courts resolve norm conflicts in international law. Instead, courts avoid resolving norm conflicts within a paradigm of hierarchy and instead remain within a paradigm of systemic integration that is aimed at maximizing the accommodation of competing sub-regimes of public international law.