Article 38, paragraph 1(b), of the Statute of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) is universally considered to be an authentic definition of custom as a principal source of international law, not least by the International Law Commission (ILC) in its recently completed work on the identification of international customary law. At the same time, though, the formula has constantly met with severe strictures concerning its very formulation. Given the text as it stands, this paradoxical dissonance cannot be satisfactorily resolved, but it can at least be tentatively explained by retracing the genesis of the clause a century ago, at the price, however, of a complete reappraisal of the whole of Article 38. Notoriously, Article 38 originated in a proposal of Baron Descamps, the president of the Advisory Committee of Jurists in charge of devising the Statute of the Permanent Court of International Justice (PCIJ). Yet the ambivalent but crucial role of the Descamps Proposal in drafting the article has not hitherto been realized. In fact, owing to the debates it aroused and to its misapprehension as a draft article instead of a merely exploratory basis of discussion, it has directly led to the shortcomings of Article 38 and especially of its clause on customary law.

中文翻译：

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对“国际习惯作为公认的普遍惯例的证据”和《世界法院规约》第 38 条的考古研究

《国际法院规约》（ICJ）第 38 条第 1 款（b）项被普遍认为是作为国际法主要渊源的习惯的可靠定义，尤其是国际法委员会（ILC）在它最近完成了关于识别国际习惯法的工作。然而，与此同时，该公式在其制定过程中不断遇到严格的限制。鉴于目前的文本，这种矛盾的不和谐无法令人满意地解决，但至少可以通过追溯一个世纪前该条款的起源来初步解释它，但代价是对整个第 38 条进行全面重新评估. 众所周知，第 38 条起源于 Baron Descamps 的提议，负责制定常设国际法院（PCIJ）规约的法学家咨询委员会主席。然而，迄今为止，德尚提案在起草该条款时所起的矛盾但至关重要的作用尚未实现。事实上，由于它引起的争论和被误解为条款草案而不是仅仅探索性的讨论基础，它直接导致了第38条的缺陷，尤其是其习惯法条款的缺陷。