Customary International Law
Binding international rules grown from state practice and acceptance
Overview
Customary international law forms where consistent state practice meets opinio juris, the sense of legal obligation, and binds even states that never consented, subject to persistent objection. Diplomatic immunity and most of the law of the sea grew this way before codification. Identifying custom is the international lawyer's perpetual method fight, as the Statute of the International Court of Justice lists it among the sources of law. Custom is both the oldest source and the most contested. The persistent objector rule, itself contested, shields only states that objected while the custom formed.
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