International law
Sources of international law

The sources of international law applied by the community of nations are listed in Article 38(1) of the Statute of the International Court of Justice, which is considered authoritative in this regard. These categories are, in order, international treaties, customary international law, general legal principles and judicial decisions and the teachings of prominent legal scholars as "a subsidiary means for the determination of rules of law". It was originally considered that the arrangement of the sources sequentially would suggest an implicit hierarchy of sources; however, the statute does not provide for a hierarchy and other academics have argued that therefore the sources must be equivalent.
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