(a) Peaceful settlement of international disputes has been developed on the principles of International Law concerning friendly…

(a) Peaceful settlement of disputes is one of the core principles of the UN Charter. The Friendly Relations Declaration of 1970 (UNGA Resolution 2625) restates the Charter principles and is widely regarded as reflecting customary international law.

• Article 2(3): States shall settle their international disputes by peaceful means, so that international peace, security and justice are not endangered.
• Article 2(4): prohibits the threat or use of force. This prohibition is a peremptory (jus cogens) norm.

Declaration principles:

• sovereign equality;
• non-intervention;
• the duty to cooperate;
• good faith fulfilment of obligations;
• the free choice of means of settlement.
• Manila Declaration (1982): reaffirmed these principles.

Framework under Chapter VI (Articles 33–38)

• The parties must first seek a solution by negotiation, enquiry, mediation, conciliation, arbitration, judicial settlement, resort to regional agencies, or other peaceful means of their choice (Article 33).
• The Security Council may investigate any situation (Article 34), recommend procedures (Article 36), and recommend terms of settlement (Article 37). It should ordinarily refer legal disputes to the ICJ (Article 36(3)).
• Any State may bring a dispute to the Council or the General Assembly (Article 35). The General Assembly may recommend measures (Articles 11, 12 and 14).
• Regional arrangements are encouraged (Article 52).

Means

• Diplomatic means: negotiation, good offices and mediation (for example, Soviet mediation leading to the Tashkent Declaration of 1966), enquiry (the Dogger Bank incident, 1904), and conciliation.

Legal means:

• arbitration: the Permanent Court of Arbitration under the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907; the Rann of Kutch award (1968); the Bay of Bengal maritime award (Bangladesh v. India, 2014); the Kishenganga award under the Indus Waters Treaty (2013);
• judicial settlement by the ICJ, whose jurisdiction is consensual under Article 36 of its Statute (special agreement, compromissory clause, or optional-clause declarations), for example Jadhav (India v. Pakistan, 2019);
• compulsory procedures under Part XV of UNCLOS, as in the South China Sea arbitration (Philippines v. China, 2016).

Link with friendly relations and cooperation Peaceful settlement follows from the prohibition of force, sovereign equality and good faith. The obligation is one of conduct: States must seek a settlement, not reach a particular outcome.

Limits remain:

• ICJ jurisdiction depends on consent;
• the veto affects the Security Council;
• compliance is uneven: China rejected the 2016 award, and India placed the Indus Waters Treaty in abeyance in April 2025 while refusing to recognise the Court of Arbitration.

Conclusion: the system reflects the logic of friendly relations: a flexible menu of consensual methods backed by the ban on force. Its effectiveness depends on political will.

(b) The post-1945 economic order rests on the Bretton Woods institutions (the IMF and the World Bank) and on the multilateral trading system, which began with GATT 1947 and became the WTO in 1995. Its premise is liberal: open markets, competition and private enterprise allocate resources efficiently, following comparative advantage (Ricardo). Growth then spreads through trade, investment and the diffusion of technology.

Legal pillars of "free movement"

• Goods (GATT 1994): most-favoured-nation treatment (Article I), national treatment (Article III), tariff bindings, and the elimination of quantitative restrictions (Article XI).
• Services (GATS): market access and national treatment under scheduled commitments.
• Investment: TRIMs, bilateral investment treaties, and investor–State arbitration.
• Technology and IP (TRIPS): minimum standards for IP protection. Article 7 speaks of the transfer and dissemination of technology, and Article 66.2 requires incentives for technology transfer to least-developed countries.
• Enterprises: multinational enterprises drive global value chains. Competition law, including India's Competition Act, 2002, polices anti-competitive conduct.

Critique

• The "free market" is a managed, negotiated order. The New International Economic Order (UNGA, 1974) and the Charter of Economic Rights and Duties of States (1974) asserted permanent sovereignty over natural resources and argued that formal equality masks North–South asymmetry.
• Technology does not move freely. Strong IP rights and export controls restrict it; the Doha Declaration on TRIPS and Public Health (2001) and the COVID-19 TRIPS waiver debate illustrate the tension.
• Recent trends run the other way: the WTO Appellate Body has been paralysed since December 2019; industrial policies (subsidies for chips and green technology), tariff wars since 2025, "friend-shoring" and sanctions all show a move towards managed and security-driven trade.
• Developing countries, including India, seek special and differential treatment, food-security safeguards (public stockholding), policy space and technology transfer.

Conclusion: the statement describes the aspiration of the liberal economic order. In practice, market freedom coexists with regulation, developmental exceptions and geopolitics, and the order is now being renegotiated.

(c) International law governs relations between States and other international persons, while municipal law governs persons within a State. Both regulate human conduct, directly or indirectly, and theories differ on whether they form one system or two.

Theories

• Monism (Kelsen; Lauterpacht): law is a unified body of knowledge, and both systems derive from a single grundnorm. Kelsen held that international law is supreme; naturalist monists stress that the individual is the ultimate subject of all law.
• Dualism (Triepel; Anzilotti; Oppenheim): the two are separate systems with different sources (the common will of States as against the will of the State), different subjects and different subject-matter. International law applies domestically only through transformation by legislation.
• Specific adoption / transformation theory: a treaty must be enacted into municipal law before courts can apply it.
• Delegation theory: international constitutional rules delegate to each State the power to decide how to implement its obligations.
• Coordination theory (Fitzmaurice; Rousseau): the two systems operate in different fields. Conflicts are conflicts of obligations, so a State cannot plead its internal law to justify breaching a treaty (Article 27 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties; Alabama Claims (1872)).

State practice

• United Kingdom: customary international law is incorporated as part of the common law (Trendtex v. Central Bank of Nigeria (1977)), while treaties require an Act of Parliament.
• United States: treaties are the "supreme law of the land" (Article VI of the Constitution), but non-self-executing treaties require legislation (Medellín v. Texas (2008)).

India:

• Article 51(c) directs respect for international law. Treaty-making is an executive act (Article 73), and Parliament implements treaties under Article 253 read with Entries 13–14 of List I.
• Treaties do not operate domestically without legislation if they affect rights (Maganbhai Ishwarbhai Patel v. Union of India (1969)). Where they conflict with municipal law, the latter prevails (Jolly George Varghese v. Bank of Cochin (1980)).
• Customary international law is part of Indian law unless it conflicts with a statute (Gramophone Co. of India v. Birendra Bahadur Pandey (1984)).
• Courts use international conventions to interpret fundamental rights and fill gaps: Vishaka (1997); PUCL (1997, telephone tapping under the ICCPR); Vellore Citizens (1996); NALSA (2014); K.S. Puttaswamy (2017).

Conclusion: India is dualist in form but harmonising in practice. The idea of "unified knowledge" is best seen as convergence: international norms increasingly shape municipal law through legislation and interpretation, while municipal law remains the channel through which international law reaches the individual.