Is ICANN Using Public International Law as a Panacea for Internet Governance Issues?

Internet governance has been developed in the realm of informality. Significant institutions, arrangements and private regulation have flourished to manage and ultimately define the Internet’s functioning. Informality renders these modes of governance, in principle, invisible in the eye of the public international lawyer. Recent developments, however, suggest that the Internet Corporation for Assigning Names and Numbers (ICANN) – a powerful non-state actor – is employing public international law as a means to introduce public interest considerations in the domain namespace. ICANN set up a novel dispute settlement procedure to assess whether generic top-level domain names (gTLDs) are contrary to accepted legal norms of morality and public order that are recognized under general principles of international law. This paper discusses how ICANN treats fundamental facets of State sovereignty and how it articulates in legal form the concept of global public interest.