Municipal Law

What is Municipal Law?
Difference Between Municipal Law and International Law.
Comparison Between Municipal Law and International Law.
Municipal Law vs International Law.

 Municipal Law

Municipal law is the national, domestic, or internal law of a sovereign state defined in opposition to
 

international law. Municipal law includes not only law at the national level, but law at the state, provincial, territorial, regional or local levels. While, as far as the law of the state is concerned, these may be distinct categories of law, international law is largely uninterested in this distinction and treats them all as one. Similarly, international law makes no distinction between the ordinary law of the state and its constitutional law.

Article 27 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties provides that, where a treaty conflicts with a state's municipal law (including the state's constitution), the state is still obliged to meet its obligations under the treaty. The only exception to this rule is provided by Article 46 of the Vienna Convention, where a state's expression of consent to be bound by a treaty was a manifest violation of a "rule of its internal law of fundamental importance".[1]
International law governs the relation of sovereign independent states inter  and constitutes a legal system the rules of which it is incumbent upon all states to observe. Municipal law also known as state law or national law is the law of state or a country.
International law regulates the behaviour of states whereas national law the behaviour of individuals. International law concerns with the external relations of the sates and its foreign affairs. Municipal law concerns with the internal relations of states o and its domestic affairs.
 International law is a law between equal sovereign states in which no one is supreme to the other but municipal laws the w law of the sovereign over the individuals subject to the sovereign rule.
whether international law is a law or not is a debatable question and this debate is continued where as municipal law i a law in a real sense and there is o doubt about it.

Difference Between Municipal Law and International Law

However international law and municipal law relates to each other and some justice considers that both from a unity being manifestation of single conception of law while others say that international law constitutes an independent system of law essentially different from the municipal Law. Thus there are two theories knows as monastic and dualistic. According to monastic and the same thing. The origin and sources of these two laws are the same, both spheres of law simultaneously regulate the conduct of individuals and the two systems are in their essence groups of commands which bind the subjects of the law independently of their will.
 According to dualistic theory international law and municipal law are separate and self contained to the extent to which rules of one are not expressly tacitly received into the other system. The two are separate bodies of legal norms emerging in part from different sources comprising different difference subjects and having application to different objects.

Take note of the basic difference between the two types of law:
•    Municipal law regulates relations within a country (intra-state).
•    International law regulates relations between countries (inter-state).
 

Understand that there are key substantive differences between international law and municipal law in the following areas:
•    the processes used to make law
•    the basis of obligation on parties
•    the way in which obligations are enforced
•    the way in which law interplays with politics
 

Recognise that the principal feature of municipal law is the existence of a legislature and a court system that can settle legal disputes and enforce the law. At the international level, however, there is no legislature in existence and it is by way of agreements between countries (treaties) that international law is made. This can also be described in the following way:
 

•    Municipal law is hierarchical or vertical - the legislature is in a position of supremacy and enacts binding legislation
•    International law is horizontal - all states are sovereign and equal
 

Understand that the lack of an enforcement mechanism akin to a police force at the international level impedes coercive enforcement. The court system at the international level is one that relies on the acquiescence of the countries to both its jurisdiction and to carrying out the decisions of the court. The court system is well-established at the international level and respected but it lacks the ability to compel a country to come before it, unlike courts in a municipal system which can require a government, company or individual to appear before it.

Notice that the role of politics in international law influences the character of international law profoundly and is more likely to reflect the political interests of the countries than might be the case at the municipal level. International law is made by way of political agreements (treaties) and will be supported or ignored according to the political interests of a country.