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In the EC context
The role and influence human rights in society has been enhanced by its association with international law and yet despite this legal springboard, the scope of its legal nature remains uncertain. By analysing the work of international human rights courts and treaty bodies alongside a brief historical review, this book assesses the distinctive legal dimension of human rights. It concludes that the legalisation of human rights is an unplanned and evolving social construct that continues under the managerial oversight of international human rights courts and treaty bodies which employ the primary tool of treaty interpretation. These characteristics of the legal environment of human rights in international law provide a good appreciation of the law itself and its limits.
The growth of pollution that crosses national borders represents a significant threat to human health and ecological sustainability. Various international agreements exist between countries to reduce risks to their populations, however there is often a mismatch between national territories of state responsibility and transboundary hazards. All too often, state priorities do not correspond to the priorities of the people affected by pollution, who often have little recourse against major polluters, particularly transnational corporations operating across national boundaries. Drawing on case studies, The New Accountability provides a fresh understanding of democratic accountability for transboundary and global harm and argues that environmental responsibility should be established in open public discussions about harm and risk. Most critically it makes the case that, regardless of nationality, affected parties should be able to demand that polluters and harm producers be held accountable for their actions and if necessary provide reparations.
This book establishes a framework for analysis of the institutional and normative character of the WTO by locating the organization in a broader theory of international institutional law and in determining the basis for the conferral and exercise of powers in relation to its executive, legislative and adjudicative functions. The WTO is also read as an international regime in order to go beyond its formal legal and constitutional bases and to observe the Members’ practice in the context of the former semi-institutionalised GATT treaty regime with which it retains strong links. WTO decision-making, which underpins and informs its institutional and normative acts, is analysed in order to better understand the dynamics of the organization. Normative developments in the WTO are reviewed from the perspective of the creation, maintenance and revision of legally binding and non-binding or ‘soft’ law norms, in the sense of principles, rules and standards contained in primary treaty rules, which set out the rights and obligations of the Members, and subsidiary rule-making activity by WTO bodies.
How is access to asylum and other forms of extraterritorial protection regulated in the European Union? Is the EU acquis in these areas in conformity with international law? Which tools does international law offer to solve collisions between both? And, finally, is law capable of bridging the foundational oppositions embedded in migration and asylum issues? This work combines the potential of legal formalism with an analytical framework drawing on political theory. It analyses the argumentative strategies used by international lawyers, and developed them further, exploiting the interpretative methodology of international law as well as elaborate discrimination arguments. The author concludes...
Do WMD non-proliferation treaties comprise a special regime in international law, with rules that differ from general international law?
Hein and Moon take up a serious problem of contemporary global governance: what can be done when international trade rules prevent the realization of basic human rights? Starting in the 1990s, intellectual property obligations in trade agreements required many developing countries to begin granting medicines patents, which often rendered lifesaving drugs unaffordable. At stake was the question of what priority would be given to health-particularly of some of the world’s poorest people-and what priority to economic interests, particularly those of the most powerful states and firms. This book recounts the remarkable story of the access to medicines movement. The authors offer an explanation for how the informal, but powerful norm that every person should have access to essential medicines emerged after a decade of heated political contestation and against long odds. They also explore the stability and scope of the norm. Finally, the book examines the limitations of informal norms for protecting human rights, and when renewed focus on changing formal norms is warranted.
The debate about the relationship between international and community law usually centres on the question of which of these two `belongs' to the other, and how `special' community legal order is in relation to international law. In this volume, a distinguished group of Finnish and British academics and practitioners break new ground by, instead of becoming mired in these questions, clearly examining the international law aspects of the activities of the Community and the Union. In doing so, they have elucidated points of connection and possible points of conflict. The result is a thought-provoking collection of essays which examines community law through the conceptual grid of international law, and thus enriches our understanding of the workings of both.
This book analyses whether, and how, equity and equitable principles can be employed as juridical tools in the legal reasoning of judges and lawyers in World Trade Organization (WTO) disputes where there is interaction between norms derived from the multilateral trade regime and other international legal regimes. Bringing the literature on equity and equitable principles in international law up to date this book tackles several legal problems which have emerged in WTO dispute settlement practice as well as engaging with the concept of the fragmentation of international law. The book provides an original argument about the role and significance of equity and equitable principles in the debate over fragmentation by providing a coherent methodology for addressing conflicts and overlaps between WTO and non-WTO norms in the context of Dispute Settlement Body proceedings.