The idea that international law constitutes a system is an unsurprisingly popular construction in the legal academy. This article argues that international lawyers have found in the International Court of Justice (hereafter the ICJ) and its sources-based and rules-based modes of legal reasoning the support and the necessary components to build (and sell) their much-cherished idea of an international legal system. As this article argues, such process of system-design rests on a fundamental irony. This irony lies with the fact that the ICJ itself has never proved very interested in system-design and always fell short of portraying international law as a legal system. The indifference of the Court to the idea of international legal system contrasts with the — carefully tailored — argumentative benefits which regional courts have associated with the idea of an international legal system. It is the aim of this article to examine how international lawyers constantly turn to the ICJ and its rules-based and sources-based modes of legal argumentation to seek support for their portrayal of international law as a system despite the ICJ’s common indifference for systemic thinking about international law.

中文翻译：

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国际法院与系统设计的讽刺

国际法构成一个体系的观点在法学院中广受欢迎，这一点不足为奇。本文认为，国际律师已经在国际法院（以下简称国际法院）及其基于来源和基于规则的法律推理模式中找到了支持和必要组成部分，以建立（和出售）他们非常珍视的国际法律体系。正如本文所言，这种系统设计过程建立在一个基本的讽刺之上。具有讽刺意味的是，国际法院本身从未证明对制度设计非常感兴趣，而且始终未能将国际法描绘成一种法律制度。法院对国际法律制度理念的冷漠与区域法院与国际法律制度理念相关的——精心定制的——争论性好处形成了对比。本文的目的是考察国际律师如何不断转向国际法院及其基于规则和基于来源的法律论证模式，以寻求支持他们将国际法描述为一个系统，尽管国际法院普遍对系统性思维漠不关心关于国际法。