Fragmentation in a Positive Light

The organizers of the present symposium demonstrated a keen sense of topicality when they chose “Diversity or Cacophony? New Sources of Norms in International Law?” as the subject-matter of the 25th Anniversary Symposium of the Michigan Journal of International Law. For the last decade or so, the question whether the international legal order finds itself in the process of fragmentation, and if so, what the consequences of this development will be, has been a popular area of study for many jurists; most of them expressing their concern about what they consider to constitute a threat to the unity of international law-a unity which they believe to have existed or to still exist, or towards which, in their view, both the law-maker and the practitioner/judge ought at least to strive.