Research On A New Trend Of International Treaty Interpretation: The Evolutionary Interpretation

In recent international disputes related to the interpretation of terms in treaties, evolutionary interpretation is used more and more widely by International Court of Justice and other disputes settlement bodies. However, evolutionary interpretation was not clearly provided in the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, and most of the disputes settlement bodies do not recognize it as a separate method of interpretation on terms in treaties, but by taking into account certain criteria to apply it on individual basis. To International Court of Justice and the WTO Disputes Settlement Body, if one term in a treaty is a “generic term”, and this treaty is aimed at “longtime-effective”, it is reasonable to assume that the contemporary meaning of the term may have evolved over time and different from its contracting meaning. To the judges in the European Court of Human Rights, when they interpret European treaties, especially the European Convention on Human Rights, their first consideration is the objective purpose and how to achieve this purpose rather than the common intents of the contracting parties.Due to the norms of international law does not explain the significance of evolutionary interpretation for specific requirements and restrictions that its apply to the standard method of interpretation there can be no investigation, it is very easy to appear in the applicable procedure that the international disputes settlement bodies use their own discretion and the terms of the treaty which can lead to machinery, arbitrary or even unreasonable interpretation, and such interpretation is often concerned adversely impact. Besides, under the impact of Case Law, an unreasonable evolutionary interpretation often brings adversely impact on latter similar cases. Hence, in order to protect China against future cases in international disputes concerning the interpretation of treaties and avoid losing any benefits, we should pay attention to the evolutionary meaning in today’s interpretation of international dispute settlement both in the applicable standards and limitations.This article is mainly divided into five parts. The first part analyzes the status of evolutionary interpretation in international treaty interpretation, including its rise and its place in the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties. The second part analyzes the theoretical basis of evolutionary interpretation, such as the Inter-temporal law principle, the Effective Treaty principle, the principle of Good Faith and Relational Contract Theory. The third part is mainly focused on the practice of evolutionary interpretation in international disputes settlement bodies, especially the different standards in the International Court of Justice, the WTO Dispute Settlement Body and the European Court of Human Rights. The forth part explains the main problems of evolutionary interpretation during the process of its application.Such problems include the rationality of evolutionary interpretation, the judicial law-making and unreasonable interpretation. And the last part mainly explores ways to solve the corresponding problems, especially designs some countermeasure for China’s future disputes settlement in the worldwide.