Becky: It's Article 4 of the Articles of Incorporation. In ICM -v- ICANN, HHJ Tevrizian (retd.) wrote
140. In the view of the Panel, ICANN, in carrying out its activities “in conformity with the relevant principles of international law,” is charged with acting consistently with relevant principles of international law, including the general principles of law recognized as a source of international law.
That follows from the terms of Article 4 of its Articles of Incorporation and from the intentions that animated their inclusion in the Articles, an intention that the Panel understands to have been to subject ICANN to relevant international legal principles because of its governance of an intrinsically international resource of immense importance to global communications and economies. Those intentions might not be realized were Article 4 interpreted to exclude the applicability of general principles of law.
Now were this a judgment in a common-law jurisdiction, one might concede that the above remarks of Judge Tevrizian are persuasive rather than binding precedent (but that was always going be the case anyway, as it isn't a court judgment; rather a decision in an arbitration). Nonetheless, the eminence and experience of the author, coupled with what clearly is his very high-level of understanding of ICANN and its role leads me to believe this is an accurate construction of the meaning of Art. 4, and I so submit.