Legal hermeneutics and international law: a case study of judicial decision-making on the European Union-Mercosur free trade agreement under Hans Kelsen's internationalism law theory

Abstract

According to the majority of legal hermeneutic theorists, the national authority has the exclusive competence to interpret the norms of the municipal institutions. They presume the exclusive competence of the internal agents to validate normative interpretations.However, nowadays, international relations show us that external institutions and external judicial decision-making are determinants of internal jurisprudence, even in the cases of judicial review by high courts. It happens because these external norms rules beyond internal norms in terms of semantics and interpretation.Thus, even considering itself sovereign, the national highest court cannot judge above international Law insofar as its State is a signatory of an external agreement. The theoretical instruments used to apply judicial decisions-making, e.g., by the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights, restrain, at a high level, the national jurisprudence by providing structural couplings, possible interfaces, and passports to a dialogical relation between national and international norms.Therefore, the final aim of this project, having Kelsen's internationalism as its theoretical core, is to describe this hermeneutic phenomenon, i.e., explain how the international Law rules and determines the meaning of the internal norms and jurisprudence. To do this, I provide a case study: the interpretative determination preordered by the new European Union-Mercosur free trade agreement, especially concerning environmental Law, democracy clauses, economic fair, sociocultural development, and human rights. (AU)