Rethinking the Sources of Public International Law in Times of Change: The Governance Potential of the GCM

Classical international law is inadequate in providing solutions for the challenges posed by an increasingly globalised world. This is because global governance does not fit easily into the structures of classical, inter-state, consent-based models of international law. Indeed, the sources of classical international law are unable to respond to most regulatory challenges deriving from global public goods (GPG). Since the protection of human rights may be considered the most prominent GPG, this research will focus on the need for structured cooperation mechanisms involving a legal regime for international migration. It will examine the governance potential of the UN Global Compact on Migration (GCM) – a soft law instrument –, which supposes its possibility to prescribe actionable commitments going beyond soft law cooperation framework. This example indicates that the line between the domestic and the international is increasingly blurred and that a new public law might be emerging.