Legal Definitions - treaty-made law

Treaty-Made Law refers to legal rules and obligations that originate from formal written agreements, known as treaties, conventions, or protocols, between two or more countries. When nations sign and ratify these international agreements, they commit to incorporating the treaty's provisions into their own national legal systems, thereby creating binding law within their borders. This type of law is also sometimes referred to as conventional law.

Here are some examples illustrating treaty-made law:

• Environmental Protection: The Paris Agreement on climate change is an international treaty where signatory nations commit to setting national targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. To fulfill these commitments, countries often pass domestic legislation, such as laws mandating renewable energy use, setting vehicle emission standards, or implementing carbon pricing mechanisms. These national laws, enacted to meet the obligations of the Paris Agreement, are examples of treaty-made law because their existence and content are directly driven by the international treaty.

• Human Rights: The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) is a treaty that aims to promote, protect, and ensure the full and equal enjoyment of all human rights and fundamental freedoms by all persons with disabilities. Countries that ratify the CRPD are obligated to take steps to ensure accessibility, non-discrimination, and inclusion for people with disabilities. This often leads to the enactment of domestic laws requiring accessible public buildings, mandating reasonable accommodations in workplaces, or prohibiting discrimination based on disability. These national laws, designed to implement the CRPD's provisions, are instances of treaty-made law.

• International Trade: The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and its successor the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), are treaties between countries that establish rules for trade and investment among them. These agreements include provisions on tariffs, customs procedures, intellectual property rights, and labor standards. To comply with such a treaty, each member country must adjust its domestic laws and regulations. For example, a country might modify its customs code to reduce or eliminate tariffs on specific goods traded with its treaty partners, or it might update its labor laws to meet agreed-upon standards. These domestic legal changes, made to adhere to the international trade agreement, constitute treaty-made law.