The Internationalized Rule of Law

In Resolution 62/70 of 8 January 2008, the UN General Assembly speaks about the rule of law at the international level and the rule of law at the national level. While these two phrases have framed the practical and scholarly debate on the rule of the law over the past years, this bifurcation hampers our understanding of, as well as effective policy formulation for, the rule of law problems that unfold in the 21st century. The rule of law increasingly is implicated at the interaction and interface between international and national law. We do not only speak about the rule of law at international level and the rule of law at domestic level. We also, and increasingly, have to speak of an internationalized rule of law. This is the rule of law as it applies to the overlapping sphere of domestic and international law.