General Principles of Human Rights and of Humanitarian Law in the Jurisprudence of the International Court of Justice

General principles of law provided in Article 38(1) (c) of the Statute of the International Court of Justice are considered as one of the applicable legal sources to international litigations by the International Court of Justice. Contrary to treaty and custom, there is no consensus on the nature of general principles of law and how they should be implemented. The Court has taken two main approaches in this regard. The question of this research, which is based on a descriptive-analytical method, is how the Court operates in regard to identifying and applying general principles of law in cases involving human rights and humanitarian issues. The conclusion is that when it comes to matters involving inter-state relations the Court relies on general principles of law recognized by the major legal systems, while in terms of human-rights and humanitarian-law issues, it recognizes general principles specific to international law, which are applicable even without explicit consent from states and arise out of the requirements of international law.