THE MEDIA IN THE INTERNATIONAL LEGAL PROCESS

All legal processes are processes of communication. In municipal legal systems, the relevant
communications generally occur through institutionalized mechanisms, such that a State’s
legislature communicates the content of a law through the language of the legislation, and
sometimes also through accompanying legislative history, and the courts may then communicate
interpretations, refinements and modifications of the law in the orders and decisions that they
issue. To the extent that a court communicates an understanding of the law with which the
legislature disagrees, the legislature may communicate that fact through subsequent legislation.
In this way, the legislature and the courts continually communicate with each other and with the
relevant community concerning the law’s substantive content.
These institutionalized mechanisms of communication are not well developed in the international
system. Although the international legal system may in some instances communicate a law’s
policy content through “legislation,” and although that legislation may from time to time be
interpreted or applied by international courts or tribunals, the legislative and judicial mechanisms
of communication are not as comprehensive in the international system as they are in municipal
systems. Much international law is not legislated, but rather established in the form of custom
over time, and modifications or refinements of the law come, not from the judiciary, but from a
variety of unorganized components, including but not limited to States, international
organizations, major corporations, nongovernmental organizations, and large terrorist groups.
Despite this informal and disorganized nature of the international legal process, communication
is nevertheless essential for the international norms to have the force of law, in terms of their
meaning for and intended effect on the relevant community. In the absence of institutionalized
channels, international legal communications often occur through the open lines of the media.
The media, in other words, fill the communicative gaps in the international legal process.