Since the end of the Cold War, states have become increasingly engaged in the suppression of transnational organised crime. The existence of the UN Convention against Transnational Organised Crime and its Protocols demonstrates the necessity to comprehend this subject in a systematic way. Synthesizing the various sources of law that form this area of growing academic and practical importance, International Law and Transnational Organised Crime provides readers with a thorough understanding of the key concepts and legal instruments in international law governing transnational organised crime. The volume analyses transnational organised crime in consideration of the most relevant subareas of international law, such as international human rights and the law of armed conflict. Written by internationally recognized scholars in international and criminal law as well as respected high-level practitioners, this book is a useful tool for lawyers, public agents, and academics seeking straightforward and comprehensive access to a complex and significant topic.

The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination is the centrepiece of international efforts to address racial discrimination, defined in broad terms to include discrimination based on skin colour, descent, ethnic, and national origin. Victims of discrimination within the scope of the Convention include minorities, indigenous peoples, non-citizens, and caste or descent groups. Virtually all national societies are diverse in terms of ethnicity or 'race' and none is free from discrimination, making it one of the great issues of our time.
Against the background of international human rights standards and mechanisms to counter racial and ethnic discrimination, this book provides the first comprehensive legal analysis of the provisions of the Convention on an article-by article basis. The book addresses the place of the Convention within the broader framework of United Nation's action against discrimination. The different chapters analyse and discuss broad topics of race, ethnicity, and international law, the genesis and drafting of the Convention, the aims and objectives of the Convention in light of its preamble, and principles of non-discrimination and equality. In particular, the book includes a critical appraisal of the contribution of the Convention to the eradication of racial discrimination. It also reflects on whether there is scope for modification of the substance or procedures of the Convention in light of challenges arising from enhanced transnational population movements, the intersection between discrimination on the ground of race and discrimination against religious communities, and the intersection of racial and gender-based discrimination.

The Oxford Handbook of International Legal Theory provides an accessible and authoritative guide to the major thinkers, concepts, approaches, and debates that have shaped contemporary international legal theory. The Handbook features 48 original essays by leading international scholars from a wide range of traditions, nationalities, and perspectives, reflecting the richness and diversity of this dynamic field. The collection explores key questions and debates in international legal theory, offers new intellectual histories for the discipline, and provides fresh interpretations of significant historical figures, texts, and theoretical approaches. It provides a much-needed map of the field of international legal theory, and a guide to the main themes and debates that have driven theoretical work in international law. The Handbook will be an indispensable reference work for students, scholars, and practitioners seeking to gain an overview of current theoretical debates about the nature, function, foundations, and future role of international law.

International investment law is in transition. Whereas the prevailing mindset has always been the protection of the economic interests of individual investors, new developments in international investment law have brought about a paradigm shift. There is now more than ever before an interest in a more inclusive, transparent, and public regime. Shifting Paradigms in International Investment Law addresses these changes against the background of the UNCTAD framework to reform investment treaties. The book analyses how the investment treaty regime has changed and how it ought to be changing to reconcile private property interests and the state's duty to regulate in the public interest. In doing so, the volume tracks attempts in international investment law to recalibrate itself towards a more balanced, less isolated, and increasingly diversified regime. The individual chapters of this edited volume address the contents of investment agreements, the system of dispute settlement, the interrelation of investment agreements with other areas of public international law, constitutional questions, and new regional perspectives from Europe, South Africa, the Pacific Rim Region, and Latin America. Together they provide an invaluable resource for scholars, practitioners, and policymakers. The individual chapters of this edited volume address the contents of investment agreements, the system of dispute settlement, the interrelation of investment agreements with other areas of public international law, constitutional questions, and new regional perspectives from Europe, South Africa, the Pacific Rim Region, and Latin America. Together they provide an invaluable resource for scholars, practitioners, and policymakers.

This book, which won an ASIL Certificate of Merit in 2002, critically examines the right of humanitarian intervention, asserted most spectacularly by NATO during its 1999 air strikes over Kosovo. The UN Charter prohibits the unilateral use of force, but there have long been arguments that such a right might exist as an exception to this rule, or linked to the changing role of the Security Council. Through an analysis of these questions, the book puts NATO's action in Kosovo in its proper legal and historical perspective.

From Treaty-Making to Treaty-Breaking is the first high-level analysis of ASEAN's external trade agreements with non-ASEAN states. It clearly sets out the intended, and unintended, consequences of ASEAN's prevailing method of treaty making, with suggested guidelines for the future. The book begins by asking whether ASEAN trade agreements follow worldwide trends in the substantive content of such agreements. It raises questions such as: to what extent is it possible to continue concluding trade agreements through individual member states?; what are the legal consequences - from negotiation and conclusion (treaty-making) through to possible breach of the agreements (treaty-breaking)?; should ASEAN resort to mixed treaty-making? This study does not seek to give a definitive answer to these questions, rather it opens up the topic to readers by suggesting different possible models for ASEAN trade agreements. This thought-provoking book will appeal to anyone interested in trade negotiations and trade agreements, particularly in Asia.

The Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Intolerance and of Discrimination Based on Religion or Belief, as proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly in 1981, is the only universal human rights instrument specifically focusing on religious intolerance and discrimination. However, recent years have seen increasing controversy surrounding this right, in both political and legal contexts. The European Court of Human Rights has experienced a vast expansion in the number of cases it has had brought before it concerning religious freedom, and politically the boundaries of the right have been much disputed. This book provides a systematic analysis of the different approaches to religious rights which exist in public international law. The book explores how particular institutional perspectives emerge in the context of these differing approaches. It examines, and challenges, these institutional perspectives. It identifies new directions for approaching religious rights through international law by examining existing legal tools, and assesses their achievements and shortcomings. It studies religious organisations' support for international human rights protection, as well as religious critique of international human rights and the development of an alternative religious 'Bills of Rights'. It investigates whether expressions of members belonging to religious minorities can be considered under the minority right to culture, rather than the right to religion, and discusses the benefits and shortcomings of such a route. It analyses the reach and limits of the provisions in the 1981 Declaration, identifies ways in which the right is being eroded as a concept, and suggests new ways in which the right can be reinforced and protected.

Large-scale population transfers are immensely disruptive. Interestingly, though, their legal status has shifted considerably over time. In this book, Umut OEzsu situates population transfer within the broader history of international law by examining its emergence as a legally formalized mechanism of nation-building in the early twentieth century. The book's principal focus is the 1922-34 compulsory exchange of minorities between Greece and Turkey, a crucially important endeavour whose legal dimensions remain under-scrutinized. Drawing upon historical sociology and economic history in addition to positive international law, the book interrogates received assumptions about international law's history by exploring the 'semi-peripheral' context within which legally formalized population transfers came to arise. Supported by the League of Nations, the 1922-34 population exchange reconfigured the demographic composition of Greece and Turkey with the aim of stabilizing a region that was regarded neither as European nor as non-European. The scope and ambition of the undertaking was staggering: over one million were expelled from Turkey, and over a quarter of a million were expelled from Greece. The book begins by assessing minority protection's development into an instrument of intra-European governance during the course of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It then shows how population transfer emerged in the 1910s and 1920s as a radical alternative to minority protection in Anatolia and the Balkans, focusing in particular on the 1922-3 Conference of Lausanne, at which a peace settlement formalizing the compulsory Greek-Turkish exchange was concluded. Finally, it analyses the Permanent Court of International Justice's 1925 advisory opinion in Exchange of Greek and Turkish Populations, contextualizing it in the wide-ranging debates concerning humanitarianism and internationalism that pervaded much of the exchange process.

Now in its third edition, this book is the authoritative text on one of the world's most important human rights treaties, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The Covenant is of universal relevance. Adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1966 and in force from 1976, it commits the signatories and parties to respect the civil and political freedoms and rights of individuals. Monitored by the UN Human Rights Committee, the Covenant ratified by the majority of UN member states. The book meticulously extracts and analyzes the jurisprudence over nearly forty years of the UN Human Rights Committee, on each of the various ICCPR rights, including the right to life, the right to freedom from torture, the right of freedom of religion, the right of freedom of expression, and the right to privacy, as well as admissibility criteria under the First Optional Protocol. Key miscellaneous issues, such as reservations, derogations, and denunciations, are also thoroughly assessed. Comprehensively indexed and cross-referenced, this book offers elegant and straight-forward access to the jurisprudence of the Human Rights Committee and other UN human rights treaty bodies. Presented in a clear and illuminating manner, it will be of use to the judiciary, human rights practitioners, human rights activists, government institutions, academics, and students alike.

A provocative reassessment of the rule of law in world politics Conventionally understood as a set of limits on state behavior, the "rule of law" in world politics is widely assumed to serve as a progressive contribution to a just, stable, and predictable world. In How to Do Things with International Law, Ian Hurd challenges this received wisdom. Bringing the study of law and legality together with power, politics, and legitimation, he illustrates the complex politics of the international rule of law. Hurd draws on a series of timely case studies involving recent legal arguments over war, torture, and drones to demonstrate that international law not only domesticates state power but also serves as a permissive and even empowering source of legitimation for state action-including violence and torture. Rather than a civilizing force that holds the promise of universal peace, international law is a deeply politicized set of practices driven by the pursuit of particular interests and desires. The disputes so common in world politics over what law permits and what it forbids are, therefore, fights over the legitimating effect of legality. A reconsideration of the rule of law in world politics and its relationship to state power, How to Do Things with International Law examines how and why governments use and manipulate international law in foreign policy.

Challenging the classic narrative that sovereign states make the law that constrains them, this book argues that treaties and other sources of international law form only the starting point of legal authority. Interpretation can shift the meaning of texts and, in its own way, make law. In the practice of interpretation actors debate the meaning of the written and customary laws, and so contribute to the making of new law. In such cases it is the actor's semantic authority that is key - the capacity for their interpretation to be accepted and become established as new reference points for legal discourse. The book identifies the practice of interpretation as a significant space for international lawmaking, using the key examples of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and the Appellate Body of the WTO to show how international institutions are able to shape and develop their constituent instruments by adding layers of interpretation, and moving the terms of discourse. The book applies developments in linguistics to the practice of international legal interpretation, building on semantic pragmatism to overcome traditional explanations of lawmaking and to offer a fresh account of how the practice of interpretation makes international law. It discusses the normative implications that arise from viewing interpretation in this light, and the implications that the importance of semantic changes has for understanding the development of international law. The book tests the potential of international law and its doctrine to respond to semantic change, and ultimately ponders how semantic authority can be justified democratically in a normative pluriverse.

The doctrine of state immunity bars a national court from adjudicating or enforcing claims against foreign states. This doctrine, the foundation for high-profile national and international decisions such as those in the Pinochet case and the Arrest Warrant cases, has always been controversial. The reasons for the controversy are many and varied. Some argue that state immunity paves the way for state violations of human rights. Others argue that the customary basis for the doctrine is not a sufficient basis for regulation and that codification is the way forward. Furthermore, it can be argued that even when judgments are made in national courts against other states, the doctrine makes enforcement of these decisions impossible. This fully restructured new edition provides a detailed analysis of these issues in a more clear and accessible manner. It provides a nuanced assessment of the development of the doctrine of state immunity, including a general comprehensive overview of the plea of immunity of a foreign state, its characteristics, and its operation as a bar to proceedings in national courts of another state. It includes a coherent history and justification of the plea of state immunity, demonstrating its development from the absolute to the restrictive phase, arguing that state immunity can now be seen to be developing into a third phase which uses immunity allocate adjudicative and enforcement jurisdictions between the foreign and the territorial states. The United Nations Convention on Jurisdictional Immunities of states and their Property is thoroughly assessed. Through a detailed examination of the sources of law and of English and US case law, and a comparative analysis of other types of immunity, the authors explore both the law as it stands, and what it could and should be in years to come.

The present study seeks to examine the genesis, development, and proliferation of multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs) - in-built law-making mechanisms and processes of institutionalization - and their ad hoc treaty-based status and the issue of the legal personality of their secretariats. It provides legal understanding of the location of MEA secretariats within an existing international host institution, as well as discussion of the issue of relationship agreements and interpretation of the commonly used language that triggers such relationships. It places under scrutiny the standard MEA phrase 'providing a secretariat', delegation of authority by the host institution to the head of the convention secretariat, possible conflict areas, host country agreement, and the workings of the relationship agreements. The book offers an authoritative account of the growing phenomenon in which an existing international institution provides a servicing base for MEA that, in turn, triggers a chain of legal implications involving the secretariat, the host institution, and the host country.

This is the first systematic analysis of multiple proceedings arising from investor-state disputes, including proceedings before multiple arbitral tribunals, the domestic courts of host states, and other forums such as the European Court of Human Rights. It seeks to identify clear, predictable, and sensible coordination mechanisms and to suggest an application of these mechanisms that reduces jurisdictional fragmentation, jurisdictional competition, and the potential for abuse of the complexities of the system of international investment protection. The author explains how uncertainty in the area extends to several issues: there are doubts as to which forums have jurisdiction over a dispute and to what questions exactly this jurisdiction extends; there are doubts as to the mechanisms that should be applied to coordinate multiple proceedings (including consolidation, hierarchical coordination mechanisms, lis pendens and res judicata, and general principles of comity and prohibition of abuse of process) and how these mechanisms relate to each other; there are also doubts as to the law applicable to coordination mechanisms and the specifics of their application. The book begins with an examination of the characteristics of the international investment framework that frequently lead to multiple proceedings. It then addresses the issue of determining jurisdiction, a prerequisite for the application of any mechanism for further coordination. The author goes on to examine the role of agreed coordination (such as the consolidation of proceedings) versus 'default' coordination mechanisms; the role of hierarchy of forums in coordination, which he argues is relevant when coordinating treaty proceedings on the one hand and non-treaty proceedings on the other; the principles of lis pendens and res judicata, which he argues apply only under limited circumstances; and concludes with the establishment of guidelines regarding the application of the principles of comity and the prohibition of abuse of process. This inherently practical subject is exclusively concerned with the existing law and seeks to provide serviceable solutions to the uncertainty facing practitioners and scholars in the current climate of investment law.

Customary laws and traditional institutions in Africa constitute comprehensive legal systems that regulate the entire spectrum of activities from birth to death. Once the sole source of law, customary rules now exist in the context of pluralist legal systems with competing bodies of domestic constitutional law, statutory law, common law, and international human rights treaties. The Future of African Customary Law is intended to promote discussion and understanding of customary law and to explore its continued relevance in sub-Saharan Africa. This volume considers the characteristics of customary law and efforts to ascertain and codify customary law, and how this body of law differs in content, form, and status from legislation and common law. It also addresses a number of substantive areas of customary law including the role and power of traditional authorities; customary criminal law; customary land tenure, property rights, and intestate succession; and the relationship between customary law, human rights, and gender equality.

The 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty has proven the most complicated and controversial of all arms control treaties, both in principle and in practice. Statements of nuclear-weapon States from the Cold War to the present, led by the United States, show a disproportionate prioritization of the non-proliferation pillar of the Treaty, and an unwarranted underprioritization of the civilian energy development and disarmament pillars of the treaty. This book argues that the way in which nuclear-weapon States have interpreted the Treaty has laid the legal foundation for a number of policies related to trade in civilian nuclear energy technologies and nuclear weapons disarmament. These policies circumscribe the rights of non-nuclear-weapon States under Article IV of the Treaty by imposing conditions on the supply of civilian nuclear technologies. They also provide for the renewal and maintaintenance, and in some cases further development of the nuclear weapons arsenals of nuclear-weapon States. The book provides a legal analysis of this trend in treaty interpretation by nuclear-weapon States and the policies for which it has provided legal justification. It argues, through a close and systematic examination of the Treaty by reference to the rules of treaty interpretation found in the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, that this disproportionate prioritization of the non-proliferation pillar of the Treaty leads to erroneous legal interpretations of the Treaty, prejudicing the legitimate legal interests of non-nuclear-weapon States.

How do treaties function in the American legal system? This book provides a comprehensive analysis of the current status of treaties in American law. Its ten chapters examine major areas of change in treaty law in recent decades, including treaty interpretation, federalism, self-execution, treaty implementing legislation, treaty form, and judicial barriers to treaty enforcement. The book also includes two in-depth case studies: one on the effectiveness of treaties in the regulation of armed conflict and one on the role of a resurgent federalism in complicating US efforts to ratify and implement treaties in private international law. Each chapter asks whether the treaty rules of the 1987 Third Restatement of Foreign Relations Law accurately reflect today's judicial, executive, and legislative practices. This volume is original and provocative, a useful desk companion for judges and practicing lawyers, and an engaging read for the general reader and graduate students.

Investment claims have exposed the vague nature of the standards by which arbitral tribunals are expected to adjudicate them and the policy reasons which explicitly or implicitly have an influence. The ad hoc nature of the tribunals and the decisions reached on various controversial issues have brought to the fore the issue of consistency. Andres Rigo Sureda's Hersch Lauterpacht Memorial Lecture examines how arbitral discretion is exercised in the face of uncertainty of the law. It explores the choices made by arbitral tribunals as they approach treaty interpretation, as they search for limits in determining jurisdiction and the content of the standards of protection and as they search for consistency in the exercise of arbitral discretion.

The link between health and human rights has been recognized for many years, but the increasing visibility of the right to health in international law has been a distinct feature of the last decade. It has been embraced by actors within civil society, academics, health professionals, lawyers and courts in several jurisdictions as a tool to address health inequalities at the local and global level, in matters ranging from access to medicines and the availability of affordable health care to sexual and reproductive health. But it has equally been the subject of derision and scorn by human rights sceptics who have described it as lacking foundation, nebulous, and incapable of implementation.
This book seeks to offer a comprehensive discussion of the status and meaning of the right to health in international law. It traces the history of this right to reveal its nexus with public health and the long-standing recognition that a State has a responsibility to attend to the health needs of its population. It also offers a theoretical account of its conceptual foundations which challenges the position held by many philosophers that health is undeserving of the status of a human right. By developing an interpretative methodology, the book provides a persuasive account of the meaning of the right to health and the obligations it imposes on States. This process reveals an understanding of the right to health that, while challenging, remains practical and capable of guiding States that are genuinely committed to addressing the health needs of their population.

Questions as to when a state owes obligations under a human rights treaty towards an individual located outside its territory are being brought more and more frequently before both international and domestic courts. Victims of aerial bombardment, inhabitants of territories under military occupation, deposed dictators, suspected terrorists detained in Guantanamo by the United States, and the family of a former KGB spy who was assassinated in London through the use of a radioactive toxin, allegedly at the orders or with the collusion of the Russian government - all of these people have claimed protection from human rights law against a state affecting their lives while acting outside its territory. These matters are extremely politically and legally sensitive, leading to much confusion, ambiguity, and compromise in the existing case law.
This study attempts to clear up some of this confusion, and expose its real roots. It examines the notion of state jurisdiction in human rights treaties, and places it within the framework of international law. It is not limited to an inquiry into the semantic, ordinary meaning of the jurisdiction clauses in human rights treaties, nor even to their construction into workable legal concepts and rules. Rather, the interpretation of these treaties cannot be complete without examining their object and purpose, and the various policy considerations which influence states in their behaviour, and courts in their decision-making. The book thus exposes the tension between universality and effectiveness, which is itself the cause of methodological and conceptual inconsistency in the case law. Finally, the work elaborates on the several possible models of the treaties' extraterritorial application. It offers not only a critical analysis of the existing case law, but explains the various options that are before courts and states in addressing these issues, as well as their policy implications.

The admission of a state to membership is an important decision for an international organisation. In making this determination, organisations are increasingly promoting the observance of human rights and democratic governance as relevant principles. They have also applied the same criteria in resolving the question of whether existing members should be excluded from an organisation's processes. Through a systematic examination of the records, proceedings and practice of international organisations, in this book Alison Duxbury examines the role and legitimacy of human rights and democracy as membership criteria. A diverse range of examples is discussed, including the membership policies and practice of the League of Nations and the United Nations; the admission of the Central and Eastern European states to the European Union; developments in regional organisations in Africa, Asia and the Americas; and the exclusion of members from the UN specialised agencies.

Given the controversies and difficulties which preceded the coming into force of the Lisbon Treaty, it is easy to forget that the Treaty is a complex legal document in need of detailed analysis for its impact to be fully understood. Jean-Claude Piris, the Director General of the Legal Service of the Council of the European Union, provides such an analysis, looking at the historical and political contexts of the Treaty, its impact on the democratic framework of the EU and its provisions in relation to substantive law. Impartial legal analysis of the EU's functions, its powers and the treaties which govern it make this the seminal text on the most significant recent development in EU law.

States the law relating to treaties from an international aspect and in the light of international sources, while at the same time preserving the point of view of the average common lawyer. Lord McNair was strongly of the opinion that the common law of the British Commonwealth and the United States can and must in the future make greater contributions both to the content and to the practical application of international law. This classic work, first published in 1961 and now available again, retains its usefulness for practising international lawyers and academics concerned with all aspects of the making, application, enforcement, breach, or alteration of treaties.

Some legal rules are not laid down by a legislator but grow instead from informal social practices. In contract law, for example, the customs of merchants are used by courts to interpret the provisions of business contracts; in tort law, customs of best practice are used by courts to define professional responsibility. Nowhere are customary rules of law more prominent than in international law. The customs defining the obligations of each State to other States and, to some extent, to its own citizens, are often treated as legally binding. However, unlike natural law and positive law, customary law has received very little scholarly analysis. To remedy this neglect, a distinguished group of philosophers, historians and lawyers has been assembled to assess the nature and significance of customary law. The book offers fresh insights on this neglected and misunderstood form of law.

This book represents one of the first comparative studies of international treaty ratification processes in multiple issue areas. The study sets out to fill a gap in political science scholarship by investigating the role that international and domestic political actors and conditions play in the critical, post-commitment phase of cooperation. The book employs the comparative case study method, drawing on original research, elite interviews, and discursive analyses of government documents in Europe, Australia, and North America. Cases examine a select number of treaties on trade cooperation, the environment, European integration, and the nuclear non-proliferation regime. The book concludes that norms and executive strategies play an especially significant role in shaping ratification outcomes. The study has implications for theories of international negotiation and foreign policy analysis as well as the practice of diplomacy.