Henrique Marcos (Maastricht University) has posted Two Kinds of Systemic Consistency in International Law (European Journal of Legal Studies (EJLS), vol. 15, n. 1, August 2023, pp. 65-83) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
The systemic view of international law has grown in popularity in recent decades. Even central authors who endorse the fragmentation of international law have recognised it as a legal system. Despite its popularity, however, some unresolved issues still obscure the systemic view. If international law is a system, does that mean it has no rule conflicts? Or is it that a system can handle these conflicts in a way that preserves legal consistency? In this respect, this article aims to contribute to a better understanding of international law as a legal system by rationally reconstructing the concept of consistency in international law. To make its argument, this research distinguishes rules from statements, as well as the consistency of rulesets (R-consistency) from the consistency of statement sets (S-consistency). With this differentiation, this article then explains how the internal logic of international law allows subjects to derive an S-consistent set of legal consequences even if the ruleset of international law is R-inconsistent.