ABSTRACT
Over the course of the twentieth century, international relations have undergone fundamental changes, in particular after the Second World War. International law has, however, remained surprisingly immune to these changes. Thus, the basic principle of equal sovereignty which has constituted the basis of international relations for several centuries has remained a cornerstone of international law. While sovereign equality has been consistently upheld in principle, a number of exceptions to its application have been noted over time. States establishing the UN decided, for instance, that while sovereign equality would hold in the context of the relatively toothless General Assembly, representation would be biased towards a few militarily and politically powerful states in the Security Council. Generally, the principle of sovereign equality, which implies that states are to a large extent free to pursue their own interests and take unilateral decisions, has been increasingly qualified, at least in some specific areas. 1
Since the traditional system, which relies mainly on the fiction of legal equality, has for a large part been favourable to bigger and economically more developed states, differentiation provides not only a conceptual tool to analyze international law in theory but also a mechanism to foster more benefits for disadvantaged states. The role of public international law in maintaining world order is often disregarded because some of its basic principles are often not upheld in times of crises. However, on a day-to-day basis, international law plays an essential role in facilitating smooth relations between states in a number of different fields. It is therefore essential for the international legal system, as well as for most national legal systems, to acknowledge the limitations of the rule of legal equality and to provide measures to remedy results which are deemed undesirable either from a broader moral perspective or in the context of the implementation of existing
Cf. Edith Brown Weiss, 'The Emerging Structure of International Environmental Law', in Norman J. Vig and Regna S. Axelrod eds, The Global Environment: Institutions, Law And Policy 98 (Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly, 1999).
