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67 Nordic J. Int'l L. 381 (1998)
The Undesirability of Soft Law

handle is hein.journals/nordic67 and id is 393 raw text is: Nordic Journal of International Law 67: 381-391, 1998. 381 © 1998 Kluwer Law International. Printed in the Netherlands. The Undesirability of Soft Law * JAN KLABBERS Associate Professor of International Law, University of Helsinki Abstract. This article investigates some of the drawbacks of the notion of soft law, with special reference to the European Union context. The author argues that soft law, useful as it may seem at first sight, is conceptually awkward, and in particular when emanating from administrative authorities may give rise to some undesirable consequences. I Ladies and gentlemen, About a month ago, I was reading memorials as a memorial judge for the Telders moot court competition. This year's case, as you may know, is about shipments of nuclear material; consequently, the organizers would expect students to argue on the basis of, e.g., guidelines and codes of conduct de- veloped within bodies such as the International Atomic Energy Agency or the International Maritime Organization. In other words, the case revolves around what academics not uncommonly refer to as 'soft law'.' With that in mind, it should hardly have come as a surprise to me, that one of the teams actually made a 'soft law' argument. Whereas most teams either upgraded or downplayed the legal status of the guidelines and codes of conduct concerned, one of them made a soft law argument, arguing, in effect, that since those guidelines from the IAEA or the IMO are soft law, certain consequences follow. What exactly those consequences were was left vague: that is indeed a standard problem when discussing soft law, as we shall shortly see. But for the moment it is perhaps first useful to analyze my surprise: here is a competition, designed to emulate real life and the real circumstances of a real case before the real International Court of Justice. The advocates come * This paper was first presented at a seminar on Soft law within EC law, organized on 28 April 1998 by Professor Lars Lindahl (University of Lund) in association with the Swedish Network for EC Law. For stylistic reasons, I have chosen to remain faithful to the original presentation and have merely added a few references. I Telders moot court competition 1998, Case concerning passage through the Vanessa Strait (Perta v. Kendal).

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