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70 Nordic J. Int'l L. 287 (2001)
The Life and Times of the Law of International Organizations

handle is hein.journals/nordic70 and id is 297 raw text is: Nordic Journal of International Law 70: 287-317, 200 1. 287 © 2001 Kluwer Law International. Printed in the Netherlands. The Life and Times of the Law of International Organizations JAN KLABBERS Erik Castrin Institute of International Law and Human Rights, Helsinki Abstract. The author analyzes the development of the law of international organizations through the case-law of the World Court and doctrinal writings, and distinguishes three stages. In the first stage (roughly, the interbellum), the law was mainly concerned with trying to come to terms with the new phenomenon of international organizations. In the second stage (peaking in the 1950s and 1960s), the law was predominantly concerned with solving practical prob- lems. In the present third stage, however, conscious attempts are being made to conceptualize and to place organizations in a larger normative perspective. The author concludes that this is a felicitous development. ff It would seem that international organizations are becoming increasingly in- teresting as topics for academic study, and that together with the study of international organization (or global governance, to use a more fashionable term), the study of the law of international organizations too is increasingly recognized as a discipline worth engaging in. This is largely so for two rea- sons. One is, that the rules and regulations developed by or under auspices of international organizations are becoming increasingly visible as influencing our daily lives. While it took us little time to realize what impact EC law could have on domestic law, we have gradually come to the realization that EC law is not alone in having an impact on domestic law or, in a straight- forward way, on our daily lives. Many livelihoods may be affected by single decisions coming out of the IMF; the protesters against the WTO meeting in Seattle, in December 1999, realized all too well how grandiose the influence of WTO law on each and every one of us is, directly or indirectly, actually or potentially; our working lives will be influenced, to a greater or lesser degree, by the activities of the ILO; and as many have found out the hard way in Kosovo, NATO too can have a serious impact on human life. This raises, or should raise, obvious questions as to the precise scope of activities of particular organizations, the means by which they acquire their powers, the transparency of their decision-making process, and the demo- cratic and judicial control over their activities. Indeed, more generally, the

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