The Creeping Constitutionalization and Fragmentation of International Law: From “Constitutional” to “Consistent” Interpretation

This article considers the different interpretive methods used to deal with the phenomena of the constitutionalization and fragmentation of international law. While the technique of ‘constitutional’ interpretation has traditionally been developed and applied with reference to the UN Charter, the expansion of other constitutionally-oriented regimes at both universal and regional levels has multiplied the threat to the coherence of the international legal order, dramatically enhancing the problem of its fragmentation. To cope with this problem, the principle of systemic integration has been proposed as a legal panacea for the coordination of different normative layers of international law. Insofar as systemic integration aims at minimizing normative conflicts and is predicated on the presumption of compatibility between the different rules at stake, it can be posited that the principle of ‘consistent interpretation” represents one of its fundamental conceptual underpinnings. However, consistent interpretation as a legal technique has been traditionally conceived for a constitutional legal environment, and its application at the international level is likely to produce unintended ‘constitutionally-oriented’ legal effects. This article concludes that the various interpretive methods considered, through their dynamic of reciprocal interferences, operate in a creeping fashion to promote, rather paradoxically, both the constitutionalization and fragmentation of international law. As such, they are symptomatic of legal pluralism and of the complexities that characterize modern international law.