Acceso usuarios
Jan Klabbers
Once upon a time, quite a long time actually, international lawyers were not terribly interested in the linguistic aspects of their craft. Treaties, obviously, would depend on language, and sometimes the two or more languages would be designated as equally authentic, but, even so, international lawyers trusted that their professional skills would enable them to solve linguistic issues without too many problems. Occasionally scholars would write something on the interpretation of treaties, typically in the form of fairly brief articles and often inspired by a particular episode or incident, but there was fairly little attention to doctrines of interpretation in the abstract, and little enthusiasm for establishing firm legal rules to structure the process of interpretation. Grotius and Vattel both formulated a handful of guidelines, but no hard and fast rules (despite the occasional use of the term "rules") emerged. And many would agree that the guidelines or maxims identified served mainly as justifications ex post facto, having arrived at a preferred interpretation through more intuitive means.
