Question

Passage A
Traditionally, the formation of customary international law (CIL) required a rigorous demonstration of two distinct elements: consistent material state practice and *opinio juris*—the psychological conviction that such practice is legally mandated. However, the latter half of the twentieth century witnessed a profound methodological shift toward what legal scholars term "modern CIL." In this evolving paradigm, international tribunals and human rights advocates increasingly deduce customary rules primarily from declarative instruments, such as United Nations General Assembly resolutions and multilateral treaties, thereby elevating *opinio juris* far above material state practice. Proponents of modern CIL argue that this deductive approach is not merely convenient, but absolutely necessary to address urgent global challenges—such as systemic human rights abuses and rapid environmental degradation—where waiting for consistent, widespread state practice would be ethically untenable or practically disastrous. By relying on universal declarations of normative consensus, modern CIL allows for the rapid crystallization of legal obligations. While traditionalists worry this decouples international law from the actual behavior of sovereign states, defenders maintain that in a highly institutionalized and interconnected international order, collective rhetorical commitments in formal diplomatic settings constitute a valid, formalized species of state practice in themselves. For these defenders, such verbal acts are adequate to bind the international community to essential, universal moral imperatives, regardless of whether every state's material actions align perfectly with their stated convictions.

Passage B
The very concept of "customary" law inherently implies a grounding in the lived, habitual actions of subjects over an extended period of time. The recent trend in international jurisprudence to mint new customary international law (CIL) almost exclusively from multilateral treaties and non-binding diplomatic resolutions is not a theoretical evolution, but rather an analytical sleight of hand. When international tribunals enthusiastically assert the existence of a customary rule based heavily on what states say in sanitized diplomatic forums, while actively ignoring or downplaying what those same states actually do in the field, they are no longer identifying custom; they are engaging in judicial legislation. This so-called "modern CIL" dangerously substitutes aspirational rhetoric for empirical reality. If a human rights rule is routinely violated in practice by the very states that voted for its adoption in a UN resolution, claiming that rule as binding customary law makes a mockery of the term "custom." Furthermore, this deductive approach actively undermines the principle of sovereign consent that serves as the bedrock of the international legal system. States often agree to non-binding political declarations precisely because they understand them to be non-binding. To later weaponize those same declarations as evidence of binding customary law bypasses the rigorous, consent-driven treaty-making process. True CIL must remain strictly inductive, rooted first and foremost in widespread, consistent, and material state practice, with *opinio juris* serving merely to distinguish genuine legal obligation from mere diplomatic courtesy or political habit.

It can be inferred from the passages that the author of Passage B and the "defenders" mentioned in Passage A would be most likely to agree with which of the following statements?