Odnos međunarodnog i unutrašnjeg prava
Problem Of Relation Between International And Municipal Law

Summary/Abstract: he paper has three parts. The first is called “Classical Conceptions”. It is a brief review of the most famous approaches, including turning attention to their weaknesses. Unlike most writers, who almost all theories divide to dualistic and monistic (provided that in the latter on the are the two different directions), the author identifies four approaches: 1) the primacy of municipal law, 2) dualism, 3) the primacy of international law, 4) pluralism. He specifically points to the historical context of these concepts ie. that they met the specific needs of the times in which they occurred. But in the meantime, the reality is radically changed. The second part is called “The Most Important Issues in Respect to the Relationship Between International and Municipal Law in Our Time.” Here the author tries to highlight the issue in question through the answers to four basic questions: 1) what is the impact of domestic and municipal law on each other (the problem of interaction), 2) whether the norms of international law and the municipal law are part of one single legal system (connection problem); 3) which norms (internal or municipal) in the event of a conflict prevail (or legal power problem i.e. hierarchy of norms), and 4) the problem of how to link domestic and municipal law. Finally, in the concluding remarks, the author notes, among other things, that the relation between international and municipal law is not limited to the question of primacy; that this relation should be distinguished from the mechanisms of introduction of international law in domestic law; and that in our time we are witnesses o of growing primacy of international law. The author ends his work by noting that a dispute over the primacy of international or national law is in fact unnecessary. According to him, intense discussions on the relation between international and municipal law in more than 100 years, have not yielded any tangible practical results, and in fact were nothing more than the sheer sophistry of legal theorists. Although they may be interesting from the point of municipal law or general legal theory, they are not, or in any case they are much and much less interesting from the standpoint of international law.

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