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The world is poised for another important transition. The United States is dealing with the impact of the Afghan and Iraq wars, the use of torture and secret detention, Guantanamo, climate change, nuclear proliferation, weakened international institutions, and other issues related directly or indirectly to international law. The world needs an accurate account of the important role of international law and The Power and Purpose of International Law seeks to provide it. Mary Ellen O'Connell explains the purpose of international law and the power it has to achieve that purpose. International law supports order in the world and the attainment of humanity's fundamental goals of peace, prosperity...
This book explores how courts decide, or ought to decide, in situations of uncertainty. A Court must always decide the case before it, even if the relevant facts remain unclear. The question then arises which party benefits and which party is burdened by that uncertainty. In these cases, the Court must apply the rules on the burden of proof or, more precisely, the burden of persuasion. Their importance for the individual claimant is obvious. The comparison of two domestic systems (one based on common law and the other a traditional code-based legal order) with regard to the issue of burden of proof helps to clarify the terminology and lays the ground for dealing with the burden of proof in i...
This book deals with the transformation of the international legal system into a new world order. Looking at concepts and principles, processes and emerging problems, it examines the impact of global forces on international law. In so doing, it identifies a unified set of legal rules and processes from the great variety of state practice and jurisprudence. The work develops a new framework to examine the key elements of the global legal system, termed the 'four pillars of global law': verticalization, legality, integration and collective guarantees. The study provides an in-depth analysis of the differences between traditional international law and the new principles and processes along which the universal society and world power are organized and how this is related to domestic power. The book addresses important changes in key legal issues; it reconstructs a complex legal framework, and the emergence of a new international order that has still not been studied in depth, providing a compass that will prove a useful resource for students, researchers and policy makers within the field of law and with an interest in international relations.
The past several years have seen strong disagreements between the U.S. government and many of its European allies. News accounts of these challenges focus on isolated incidents and points of contention. The End of the West? addresses some basic questions: Are we witnessing a deepening transatlantic rift, with wide-ranging consequences for the future of world order? Or are today's foreign-policy disagreements the equivalent of dinner-table squabbles? What harm, if any, have events since 9/11 done to the enduring relationships between the U.S. government and its European counterparts? The contributors to this volume, whose backgrounds range from political science and history to economics, law, and sociology, examine the "deep structure" of an order that was first imposed by the Allies in 1945 and has been a central feature of world politics ever since. Creatively and insightfully blending theory and evidence, the chapters in The End of the West? examine core structural features of the transatlantic order to determine whether current disagreements are minor and transient or catastrophic and permanent.
Nation states and minorities resort more and more to violence when safeguarding their political interests. Although the violence in the Middle East has been dominating world politics for some time now, European governments have had their share of ethnic violence to contend with as this volume demonstrates. And as the case studies show, ranging as they do from the Basque Country to Chechnya, from Northern Ireland to Bosnia-Herzegovina, this applies to western Europe as much as to eastern Europe. However, in contrast to other parts of the world, instances where political struggles for power and social inclusion between minorities and majorities lead to full-fledged inter-ethnic warfare are still the exception; in the majority of cases conflicts are successfully de-escalated and even resolved. In a comprehensive conclusion, the volume offers a theoretical framework for the development of strategies to deal with violent ethnic conflict.
In its case law, the European Court of Human Rights has acknowledged that national courts are bound to give effect to Article 8 of the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR) which sets out the right to private and family life, when they rule on controversies between private individuals. Article 8 of the ECHR has thus been accorded mittelbare Drittwirkung or indirect ‘third-party’ effect in private law relationships. The German law of privacy, centring on the "allgemeines Persönlichkeitsrecht", has quite a long history, and the influence of the European Court of Human Rights’ interpretation of the ECHR has led to a strengthening of privacy protection in the German law. This book considers how English courts could possibly use and adapt structures adopted by the German legal order in response to rulings from the European Court of Human Rights, to strengthen the protection of privacy in the private sphere.
Threats of force are a common feature of international politics, advocated by some as an economical guarantee against the outbreak of war and condemned by others as a recipe for war. Article 2(4) of the United Nations Charter forbids states to use threats of force, yet the meaning of the prohibition is unclear. This book provides the first comprehensive appraisal of the no-threat principle: its origin, underlying rationale, theoretical implications, relevant jurisprudence, and how it has withstood the test of time from 1945 to the present. Based on a systematic evaluation of state and United Nations practices, the book identifies what constitutes a threat of force and when its use is justified under the United Nations Charter. In so doing, it relates the no-threat principle to important concepts of the twentieth century, such as deterrence, escalation, crisis management, and what has been aptly described as the 'diplomacy of violence'.
In her manuscript Elisa Ravasi examines how the ECtHR responds to the growing challenges of overlapping legal systems. She focuses, in particular, on the relationship between the ECHR and EU law. First, she systematically analyses 10 years of ECtHR jurisprudence on the principle of equivalent protection and develops an innovative analysis scheme for its application. Afterwards, she examines the equivalency of the human rights protection provided by the ECJ in light of the minimum standards of the ECHR in three specific fields (naming law, ne bis in idem and equality of arms). Finally, she considers whether the presumption of equivalent protection of the ECtHR in favour of the EU is still justified.
Successive hegemonic powers have shaped the foundations of international law. This book examines whether the predominance of the United States is leading to foundational change in the international legal system. A range of leading scholars in international law and international relations consider six foundational areas that could be undergoing change, including international community, sovereign equality, the law governing the use of force, and compliance. The authors demonstrate that the effects of US predominance on the foundations of international law are real, but also intensely complex. This complexity is due, in part, to a multitude of actors exercising influential roles. And it is also due to the continued vitality and remaining functionality of the international legal system itself. This system limits the influence of individual states, while stretching and bending in response to the changing geopolitics of our time.
Structural human rights deficiencies in the member states of the European Convention of Human Rights have caused numerous individual applications to the European Court of Human Rights and are a considerable factor in the Court's persistent overload crisis. The Pilot-Judgment Procedure was devised to tackle these structural deficiencies and has become an important instrument of the Court. Dominik Haider examines to which extent the Pilot-Judgment Procedure is reconcilable with the European Convention on Human Rights. After an analysis of the member states’ obligations to resolve structural deficiencies, the author asks if the European Court of Human Rights is empowered to take the procedural steps which are characteristic of the Pilot-Judgment Procedure. In particular, the Court's express orders are critically scrutinised.