ABSTRACT
A real conflict in the strict sense was defined as involving a direct incompatibility between legal obligations that parties to two treaties entered into, meaning that they cannot simultaneously comply with their obligations under both treaties. But such real conflicts are not only possible in competence conflicts or between two different international treaties but in many more contexts too. A famous case that best exemplifies the problem of legal reasoning that oxymora or paradoxes may cause is found in the so-called "Gallows paradox" found in Don Quixote, a Spanish novel written by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. Oxymora have been used to denominate the difficulties of connecting different legal cultures or systems to legal concepts originating from other places, like Chinese culture to law, or Indian culture to the rule of law.
