s.VI Treaty Clauses, Initial Decisions on Treaty-Making

As Chapter 1 explains, the dominant view is that States, IOs, and other qualified subjects make treaties when they manifest their intent to conclude an agreement governed by international law, whether in writing or some other recorded form.7 But, as Chapter 2 details, treaties are not the only form of agreement international actors may conclude; they may opt instead to conclude a political commitment, where they intend their agreement to have exclusively political or moral (and not legal) force.8 Discerning what the participants intended—namely, a treaty or a...