International Law and Science

On the one hand, progress in science raises problems that were not addressed before by international law (the access, for example, to some medical treatment or to reproductive technologies shed new lights on the potential problems arising from the balance between human rights and public interests; the same reasoning may extend to the possibility offered by the improvement of new techniques to collect data; similar problems regarding the balancing of potentially conflicting interests also arise in the context of environmental law as regards for example legal limits to the exploitation of natural resources). The question whether international rules may provide effective responses to problems and challenges posed by advancements in science and technology will be the object of the first part of the Course.
On the other hand, the increasing number of international rules that make reference to scientific notions (e.g. norms included in the UNCLOS Convention, which use a significant number of terms drawn from the vocabulary of science or the Whaling Convention, that, in principle, permits, under strict conditions, the killing of whales for scientific research purposes) poses new challenges to judges required to pronounce on their interpretation and application. In recent times, several disputes brought before the international courts and tribunals have touched upon scientific evidence and highly technical matters. The way how international judges operate whenever they meet science, with a particular reference to the role of experts, will be addressed during the second part of the Course.