Non liquet is a legal term used to describe a situation where there is no applicable law.

That is to say, a court comes to the conclusion that the situation engaged in a case has no answer from the governing system of law. This is of particular relevance to international law since international courts, be it the ICJ or ad hoc tribunals, cannot invent law to redress a lacunae. As has now become the practice, the last resort that can be taken recourse to in deciding contentious cases is the widely accepted law of civilized nations (see generally Barcelona Traction, Temple of Preah Vihear, as accepting the doctrine of estoppel as part of international law). The ex aequo et bono jurisdiction has till date never been accepted by states and it can be believed that states would never. Thus, absence of determinable international law leads to the court declaring something non liquet. But it has been argued by many that invoking of the non liquet doctrine is opposed to the notion of law being a complete system and that there are no loose ends anywhere to be tied. But note that municipal courts enforcing international law are not constrained to declare an area non liquet. See Nourse LJ to that effect in [1988] 3 WLR 1118 : 80 ILR 135. Barcelona Traction was a corporation that controlled light and power utilities in Spain and was incorporated in Canada in 1915 by Frederick Stark Pearson. ... This page is a candidate to be copied to Wiktionary. ...