The Uses of the Outputs of the International Law Commission in International Adjudication

This paper examines the methods which international courts and tribunals (ICTs) employ when using ILC works for the purpose of determining rules of international law and their content. Specifically, it identifies common patterns in the ways in which ICTs, first, justify their reliance on ILC works and, second, deal with their ambiguities. The paper argues in favour of a consistent methodology for the treatment of ILC works in international adjudication. Such framework is based on the distinction between the identification of the status of a normative proposition contained in these texts and the determination of its content or its interpretation. The identification of the status of a normative proposition requires a critical assessment and reconstruction of the evidence leading up to its development taking also into account that these instruments are not a monolith from the perspective of sources. However, the interpretation of a proposition whose status is uncontested follows a line of inquiry akin to treaty interpretation. This observation has broader implications for the process of interpretation in international law. Specifically, apart from the context of treaty interpretation, international courts or tribunal interpret the normative propositions contained in ILC works as a methodological shortcut for the interpretation of rules of customary international law or general principles of law. Conversely, the employment of methods akin to treaty interpretation in this context can constitute evidence for the emergence of common rules, principles, or good practices of interpretation applicable also to unwritten international law

Simulated structure and imaging of NTCDI on Si(1 1 1)-7 × 7 : a combined STM, NC-AFM and DFT study

The adsorption of naphthalene tetracarboxylic diimide (NTCDI) on Si(1 1 1)-7 × 7 is investigated through a combination of scanning tunnelling microscopy (STM), noncontact atomic force microscopy (NC-AFM) and density functional theory (DFT) calculations. We show that NTCDI adopts multiple planar adsorption geometries on the Si(1 1 1)-7 × 7 surface which can be imaged with intramolecular bond resolution using NC-AFM. DFT calculations reveal adsorption is dominated by covalent bond formation between the molecular oxygen atoms and the surface silicon adatoms. The chemisorption of the molecule is found to induce subtle distortions to the molecular structure, which are observed in NC-AFM images