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Despite the doctrinal criticism raised as a result of the unbending positions taken by the European Community in Bananas and Beef Hormones, the EC's implementation record in the WTO, though not exemplary, does not add up to a generally non-complying approach. On the other hand, the record seems to reflect an attitude that, in accordance with the view traditionally maintained by the European Court of Justice from International Fruit to Portugal, finds its cornerstone in the principle of negotiations with a view to achieving mutually satisfactory solutions, even beyond the limits set by the DSU. Following these premises, the purpose of this paper is to analyse the impact that has been exercised on the EC's contentious practice by interpretations of the WTO system given by the EC courts, in fine tuning with the stand taken by the EC's political bodies. After having considered the legal and political reasons behind the case-law of the Community's courts on 'direct effect', the paper attempts to analyse to what extent the EC's conduct in the framework of the WTO dispute settlement process has been influenced by the 'scope for manoeuvre' argument, devised by the EC] in the Portugal ruling. It will become clear that an approach mainly aimed at preserving the balance of mutual advantages among the WTO Members queries the role played in the dispute settlement mechanism by the agreements between parties. An analysis is submitted of four different categories of agreements concluded by the EC in the framework of the dispute settlement mechanism, also in cases not expressly provided by the DSU. On a higher level of investigation, the 'scope for manoeuvre' approach is strictly connected with another widely discussed issue, namely the nature of the legal obligations entered into by WTO Member States. The study aims to demonstrate that WTO rules are a source of rights and obligations that are disposable in nature for Member Parties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to justify the claim that there are profound differences in the conception of the system of international law in the textbooks of various European countries. This is despite considerable cooperation among distinguished jurisconsults in the context of the European Union and the International Court of Justice. The paper undertakes an inevitably controversial account of the method of a leading French textbook on international law alongside a leading German textbook, while placing them both in the context of a more representative selection of textbooks from the two countries. A method of comparative analysis is then used which draws from political theory to highlight more systematically the intellectual context of the two works. The conclusion is that the resolution of the differences between the two works rests outside the discipline, when understood strictly, in so far as they are rooted in divergences of traditions of state and nation. These can only be resolved as a matter of political decision in favour of 'an ever closer union' of European states. There are great strengths in both works and European intellectual traditions should be well able to accommodate them in a new synthesis, given a will to closer political union. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Fundamental controversy reigns in Europe over how to understand globalization. This is particularly true with respect to globalization's impact on democracy. The spectrum of relevant diagnoses ranges from those which identify an extreme danger to democracy to others which find that democracy is undergoing a substantive strengthening. The spectrum of proposals is similarly divergent. Some recommend the acceptance of a loss of democracy, some call for national self-preservation, others advocate a global democratic federation. The paper provides a stocktaking from a European perspective of influential scholarly positions on the basis of categorized diagnoses and proposals, and examines their conceptions of the further development of international law. This project is carried out in three steps. The first step serves to outline the concepts of globalization and democracy. The second presents important conceptions relating to the impact of globalization on the reality of democracy in a world organized around statehood. The third step puts forward ideas for the protection and development of democracy in the process of globalization and relates them to conceptions on the future development of international law. The article concludes with perspectives for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Introduction raises at a general level the question whether and in what sense it is possible to speak of national textbook traditions in international law within Europe. As the articles which follow are the work of commentators on textbooks, the Introduction itself attempts to give a flavour of the residential colloquium in which authors of the textbooks themselves contributed effectively to the discussion of the themes of national textbook traditions. As the articles cannot embrace every theme of the textbook problematic, the Introduction places each of them in the wider context and invites further debate to flesh out the issues more fully. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this article the authors response on the comments made on their article "The Hidden World of WTO Governance" by Richard H. Steinberg. The authors discuss the current and traditional trend of trade administration in Europe. They inform that their article tries to find the actual and potential operation of alternative modes of governance within two World Trade Organization(WTO) committees. It mentions the process of intergovernmental bargaining to affect the operation of WTO committees.

Presents European efforts on regulating the Internet in Europe. Problems encountered on Internet governance; Failure of Europeans to shift the issue of Internet regulation into an international arena; Arguments on an international law for Internet governance.

Credited with having fostered the renaissance of Francisco de Vitoria and the School of Salamanca in international law circles in the interwar period, Camilo Barcia Trelles has largely fallen into oblivion along with most Spanish international law professors of the Spanish Civil War generation. The first part of this article provides an outline of the long career of Barcia Trelles against the background of the radically transformed domestic and international context of the interwar years and the aftermath of World War II in both Spain and Europe. The second part surveys three key themes of Barcia Trelles' 60-year long contribution to the study of international law and international politics. First, it analyses his early interest in the process of regionalism in Latin America and the role of North American foreign policy in the region. This is followed by an analysis of Barcia Trelles's attention to the study of the Spanish classics of international law during the interwar period, and, finally, by an overview of his approach to the study of international law in the light of international politics during the Cold War. The conclusion briefly engages with the legacy of Barcia Trelles' life and works in the European tradition of international law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Jean-Claude Juncker was President of the first 'political Commission', being the first (and so far the only) President to be elected through the Spitzenkandidat system following the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty. Juncker was appointed as head of a college of commissioners with high profiles and extensive experience in national politics. During his tenure, Juncker had to manage several crises, including Brexit, the Syrian war and the consequent mass migrations, as well as growing international tensions with Russia and the US. His personal and unique style, together with his broad domestic experience in European affairs, make him a singular personality and a singular President of the European Commission, whose legacy it is still too early to call. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This contribution is inspired by the thought-provoking article 'Monopolizing War' by Eyal Benvenisti and Doreen Lustig. My Reply argues that early 19th-century IHL codification projects in the eyes of European governments did not primarily serve domestic anti-revolutionary purposes. It also takes a somewhat sceptical stance as to the recent scholarly trend, which reduces historical explanations for the development of international law to domestic contexts in one or more powerful states involved in the respective law- and policy-making process. Building on the intriguing historical critique of early IHL's 'humanizing substance' developed in 'Monopolizing War' and by referring to more recent IHL codification projects (small arms, nuclear weapons, aerial bombing, autonomous weapons), the second part of the contribution sketches four 'de-humanizing' discursive strategies, which arguably haunt international humanitarian law-making until today: (i) cynical window dressing; (ii) constructing an ontological wall; (iii) utilitarian reasoning; and (iv) excluding the periphery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the current European refugee 'crisis' by challenging, from a theoretical perspective, the way in which the European Union (EU) has used the increased number of deaths in the Mediterranean as an opportunity to frame recent migration flows as an emergency that, by definition, can only be addressed through the adoption of exceptional measures. The analysis engages with the work of Giorgio Agamben on biopolitics and state of exception to illustrate, first, the need to rethink the way in which borders are defined and used (for example, externalized) within the context of the European refugee 'crisis'. Second, Agamben's work is useful to understand what moves the externalization and privatization of migration, and to ascertain how international law has enabled the emergence of this 'crisis' framing, whilst, at the same time, partly losing its ability to challenge EU policies. The article argues that the posture of humanitarianism adopted by the EU masks the fact that the appalling situation in which refugees are abandoned is not accidental but, rather, inherent to the enhanced measures adopted by the EU and its member states as part of the European Agenda on Migration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the trope of the ‘legal black hole’ to reveal questions of legal theory arising from contemporary migrant drownings. The theme was popularized during what was then called the ‘war on terror’, but its trajectory is longer and more complex. Its material history, as well as its intellectual history within legal scholarship, suggest three distinct ‘legacies’ of legal black holes: the counterterrorism legacy; the migrant-detention legacy; and the legacy of the maritime legal black hole. The tripartite division provides a conceptual typology of instances where persons are rendered rightless. While the two former types are characterized by de facto rightlessness due to a violation of international law, the latter exposes a seldom acknowledged, yet crucial, characteristic of international law; the age-old doctrine on the division of responsibilities between states and individuals at land and at sea is now creating the conditions in which some people are rendered de jure rightless. Moreover, the typology sheds light on the specifically legal reasons for the seeming failure to end mass drowning of migrants and refugees in the Mediterranean Sea. Tracing the ways in which people become de jure rightless is ultimately suggested as a broader research agenda for scholars of international law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reflects on the European Parliament's elections in 2014 and an allegedly anti-European vote involving nations such as France and Great Britain as of May 2014, and it also presents an introduction to the journal which addresses several masthead changes and various reports about topics such as minority language rights and the relationship between science and international law. Customary international law, absenteeism, and investments in the future of Europe are also examined.

International law emerged as a professional academic specialization in a 19th century European context of wide-ranging public debates about the nature and cultural significance of science. Ever since, the status of international law as an academic discipline has been intimately connected with the capacity of international lawyers to demonstrate that our discipline is properly scientific. Yet the ideals of science upon which international lawyers have drawn in seeking to demonstrate the scientific nature of our work have not remained static. This article explores how those shifting ideals of science have shaped the concerns, questions, methods, and theories adopted by professional legal scholars in different times and places, including the 19th century Cambridge of Whewell, the 20th century Vienna of Kelsen, the post-war New Haven of McDougal and Lasswell, and the globally networked university of the 21st century. In returning to the historical debates out of which today’s highly stylized versions of positivist and policy-oriented international law emerged, the article shows that while scholars of international law have shared a commitment to scientific values of rationality, progress, and objectivity, they have understood those commitments as requiring different forms of conduct, different means of producing knowledge, and different relations to the state. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Over the past couple of years, international law and international relations scholarship has shifted its focus from the question of whether human rights treaties bring any state-level improvements at all to investigations in the domestic context of the factors and dynamics influencing state compliance. In this direction, and focusing on the European Court of Human Rights, this study inquires into the factors that account for variable patterns of state compliance with its judgments. Why do national authorities in some states adopt a more prompt and responsive attitude in implementing these judgments, in contrast to other states that procrastinate or respond reluctantly? On the basis of a large-N study of the Strasbourg Court’s judgments and a comparison across nine states, this article argues that variation in state implementation performance is closely linked to the overall legal infrastructure capacity and government effectiveness of a state. When such capacity and effectiveness are high and diffused, the adverse judgments of the Strasbourg Court are unlikely to be obstructed or ignored, even when the government, political elites, or other actors are reluctant and not in favour of substantive remedies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A diverse set of national and international bodies is increasingly commenting upon other organizations’ compliance with ‘global administrative law’ norms, creating a complex network of interaction and review. Although many forms of interaction can be identified and observed, horizontal review between international organizations appears to be relatively rare. This article examines one instance in which review did emerge: the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe's criticisms of the transparency and accountability of the World Health Organization (WHO) during the H1N1 pandemic. Two key questions arise from the case study. First, what structural or institutional features allowed inter-institutional review to take place? And, secondly, why would two institutions have such divergent views of an international organization's accountability and transparency? The analysis suggests that a key factor in allowing horizontal review to occur is diversity in institutional composition – in terms either of membership, distribution of power between members, or interests represented by members. In this case study, the Parliamentary Assembly represented the interests of states’ legislative branches, whereas the WHO representatives reflect the interests of states’ executive branches. Variations in baseline assumptions regarding the WHO's function in regulating infectious disease response and to whom it should be accountable may partially explain the substantive divergence of opinion. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article, based on a broader project, focuses on the interaction between the two European Courts (the Court of Justice of the European Union – ECJ and the European Court of Human Rights – ECtHR) and uses the specific area of expulsion/deportation of third country nationals (non-EU nationals) from European territory as a case study. The work examines the ECJ’s and ECtHR’s divergent approaches in this area of law, and it then provides some preliminary reflections on the potential of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights and the EU’s accession to the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR) to achieve a more harmonious and convergent human rights system in Europe. It finally argues that the post-Lisbon era has the potential to enhance the protection of fundamental rights within the continent. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

International human rights law requires states to protect people from abuses committed by third parties. Decision-makers widely agree that states have such obligations, but no framework exists for identifying when states have them or what they require. The practice is to varying degrees splintered, inconsistent, and conceptually confused. This article presents a generalized framework to fill that void. The article argues that whether a state must protect someone from third-party harm depends on the state's relationship with the third party and on the kind of harm caused. A duty-holding state must take reasonable measures to restrain the abuser. That framework is grounded in international law and intended to guide decisions in concrete cases. So after presenting and justifying the framework, the article applies it to two current debates in human rights law: when must a state protect against third-party harms committed outside its territory? And what must states do to protect women from private acts of violence? The article ends by suggesting how the same framework may inform analogous obligations outside human rights law. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

2008 marked the sixtieth anniversary of the adoption of the Genocide Convention and Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the UN General Assembly. These two instruments adopted and proclaimed by the then newly formed world body on successive days, 9 and 10 December 1948 respectively, represent two sides of one coin. Born of the horrors of the 1930s and 1940s, the United Nations Charter speaks of human rights and to the importance of the rule of law. The Genocide Convention and UDHR are integral to the pursuit of these aims. The work of two international lawyers, Hersch Lauterpacht and Raphael Lemkin, whose personal and familial histories traverse the tragedies of 20th century Europe, was instrumental in the realization of these twin efforts. This article examines their respective contributions to contemporary international law by concentrating on their European experience from their youth in Central Europe and the early days of the League of Nations to their mature work up to and including the Nuremberg Judgment.Important events – whether serious, happy or unfortunate – do not change a man's soul, they merely bring it into relief, just as a strong gust of wind reveals the true shape of a tree when it blows off all its leaves. Such events highlight what is hidden in the shadows; they nudge the spirit towards a place where it can flourish.1 [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this article the authors response on the comments made on their article "National Courts, Domestic Democracy, and the Evolution of International Law" by Nikolaos Lavranos, Jacob Katz Cogan and Tom Ginsburg. The authors discuss the potential of inter-judicial cooperation, progress of national court activism and international law in Europe. It further discusses the International Law in Domestic Courts (ILDC) and changing attitude of the US Supreme Court toward international law.

In this article the author responses on the comments made on the article "The Hidden World of WTO Governance" by Andrew Lang and Joanne Scott. The author informs that World Trade Organization (WTO) committees work as substitute for WTO governance. The author analysis the sociology of global technocracy, power politics and intergovernmental framework of WTO committees. It further discusses the negotiations of General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) committee.

European participation in controversial aspects of the ‘war on terror’ has transformed the question of the extraterritorial scope of the European Convention on Human Rights from abstract doctrine into a question with singularly pressing political and legal ramifications. Yet the European Court of Human Rights has failed clearly to articulate when and why signatory states’ extraterritorial actions can be brought within the jurisdiction of the European Convention. The Court has veered between a narrow view of extraterritorial jurisdiction confined to four fixed categories of cases and a broader view which contemplates extraterritorial jurisdiction when a signatory state effectively controls an individual's ability to exercise fundamental Convention rights. Scholars have favoured the latter, arguing that the universality of human rights demands an expansive concept of extraterritorial jurisdiction. This article proposes a different theory: existing categories of extraterritorial jurisdiction can best be understood as limited exceptions to the rule of territorial jurisdiction because they all require some significant connection between a signatory state's physical territory and the individual whose rights are implicated. Properly understood, extraterritorial jurisdiction under the European Convention is and should be limited to such situations to maintain a workable balance between the Convention's regional identity and its universalist aspirations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this article the author responses on the comments on the article "The Concept of Law in Global Administrative Law" by Benedict Kingsbury. The author discusses the concept of Global Administrative Law (GAL) project and its development in Europe. The author informs that the objective to GAL project is to increase the transparency in its regulatory system and establishing control in its legal form.

In this article the author responses on comments made on the article "The Use of Force against Terrorists" by Christian J. Tams. The author discusses the use of jus ad bellum law and armed force to deal with terrorists from extraterritorial and cross-border. The author explains that jus ad bellum law is related to the resort of armed force in Europe. The author further mentions the ways to protect a state from terrorists and their attacks including Unilateralism.

In this article the author responses on the comments made on the article "National Courts, Domestic Democracy, and the Evolution of International Law" by Eyal Benvenisti and George Downs. The author discusses the relationship between national and international courts, their contracting parties and governments. The author focuses on how proliferation of international courts and tribunals has been used by judicial bodies to remodel the international law of Europe.

In this article the author responses on the comments made on article "Access to Justice, Denial of Justice and International Investment Law" by Francesco Francioni. The author informs that the article speculates different areas of international law and its history in Europe. It mentions that denial of justice reflects the strategic concern of the modern human rights movement. It also focuses on how the conflict among human rights protections and the systems of investment law arise and resolve.

A list of international law books and European law books received by "The European Journal of International Law" as of April 1, 2009 is presented which includes "Timor-Leste: Challenges for Justice and Human Rights in the Shadow of the Past," edited by William Binchy, "Synergies in Minority Protection: European and International Law Perspectives," edited by Robert Dunbar and Kristin Henrard, and "Racism and Equality in the European Union," by Mark Bell.

For Member States of the European Union, participation in this supranational organization has increased the number of difficulties in the international arena. Occasionally, the expanding legislative activity of the European institutions reaches out beyond the borders of the European legal system and incidentally affects the EU Member States' autonomous relations with third parties. Consequently the EU and its members, often with success, seek third parties' consent to exceptional treatment. Because of their number and significance, such derogations have inspired this article to inquire into their expansion and legal status under international law. Even though the EU-related exceptions have not created an international customary rule, the article observes that European integration shapes international rules in diverse fields and adjusts them to its needs. Since European integration is designed to administer and regulate an increasing number of issues, the autonomous international obligations of the EU Member States may become an obstacle. Because the European Union is likely to continue using special treatment in the future, it is important to assess how far the supranational exception can go in order to accommodate all interests at stake. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses various reports published within the issue, including book reviews, an article on Europe's place in international law, and an article on the European Court of Human Rights.

The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) is the crown jewel of the world's most advanced international system for protecting civil and political liberties. In recent years, however, the ECtHR has become a victim of its own success. The Court now faces a docket crisis of massive proportions, the consequence of the growing number of states subject to its jurisdiction, its favourable public reputation, its expansive interpretations of individual liberties, a distrust of domestic judiciaries in some countries, and entrenched human rights problems in others. In response to this growing backlog of individual complaints, the Council of Europe has, over the last five years, considered numerous proposals to restructure the European human rights regime and redesign the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). This article argues that these proposals should be understood not as ministerial changes in supranational judicial procedure, nor as resolving a debate over whether the ECtHR should strive for individual or constitutional justice, but rather as raising more fundamental questions concerning the Court's future identity. In particular, the article argues for recognition of 'embeddedness' in national legal systems as a deep structural principle of the ECHR, aprinciple that functions as a necessary counterpoint to the subsidiary doctrine that has animated the Convention since its founding. Embeddedness does not substitute ECtHR rulings for the decisions of national parliaments or domestic courts. Rather, it requires the Council of Europe and the Court to bolster the mechanisms for governments to remedy human rights violations at home, obviating the need for individuals to seek supranational relief and restoring countries to a position in which the ECtHR's deference to national decision-makers is appropriate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the EU's trade and development policy from the 1950s to the present day. From its origins in France's demand that the EEC join in its colonial enterprise, this policy has grown to embrace all developing countries in a complex patchwork of trade preferences. However, it would be wrong to see this status quo as the natural evolution of an early interest in assisting developing countries. Rather, the EU's system of trade preferences represents a compromise between its desire to protect the economic interests of the erstwhile colonies and the demands of non-privileged developing countries for improved access to European markets. From a development perspective, this produces anomalies. Even today, via more favourable rules of origin, Sudan trades on better terms with the EU than Laos. However, as this article seeks to demonstrate, due largely to enforceable WTO rules, the EU is now coming to adopt principle- the actual needs of developing countries-over history as the basis for its future trade and development policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The nature of international law as a legal system which, on the one hand, responds to the need for interaction between states inherent to international society and, on the other hand, is based on agreement between states, categorically excludes viewing i nternational law as the product of a specific regional, i.e., European tradition. Yet it is still asserted that international law is a European tradition. Such assertions are not only conceptually flawed, but are also unsupported by evidence. The origins of international law lie outside Europe, and at no stage of its development has international law been a truly European system. This holds true not only in terms of general international law. but also in relation to certain ideas developed at the European level, including the 'public law of Europe', and of modern European projects that appear to be based on ideas of a regional solidarity in Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While Europe is somewhat indeterminate as a legal concept, with respect to refugee law the European Union is the major actor in the region, although the Council of Europe provides protection guarantees for many people who fail to obtain refugee status consequent on the restrictive approach taken in EU Member States. In 2004, the EU finally produced the harmonized policies on qualification for refugee status or subsidiary protection, and on minimum procedures throughout the 25, called for in the 1997 Treaty of Amsterdam. The principal criticism of the approach of the EU towards refugees is that it has combined asylum with immigration. Immigration law is about controlling entry, whereas refugee law is about providing international protection. The absence of a supervisory tribunal to oversee the application of the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and its 1967 Protocol has meant that states have developed their interpretations of refugee law independently; harmonization, on the other hand, inevitably leads to equalizing down at the expense of the refugee when it is attempted to attune those independent approaches. Taken together with the link to migration, particularly irregular migration, the focus within the EU is on numbers and on so-called 'bogus' asylum seekers. With an immigration control mentality driving refugee policy, it is little wonder that the approach of the European Union has consisted in part of measures designed to move decision-making to third states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Are the Europeans indeed, as they think, the 'better peoples' of the United Nations? In this article, the author takes a closer look at this flattering European self-image by selecting a few issues of the general theme of 'Europe's practice and the UN'. Having recalled, in Section 2, Europe's marginal role in the foundation of the UN at the end of World War II, and the fragmented existence of Europe in the Organization in the long period of the Cold War (Section 3), the article turns to its central subject -- Europe's compliance with the rules of the UN Charter. Here, in Section 4, matters which the author considers particularly important or characteristic are singled out, among them the prohibition of the use of force, the obligation of states to settle their disputes by peaceful means, the protection of human rights, and decolonization and economic cooperation with developing countries. In Section 5, the article reflects on the efforts of the EU Member States to coordinate their foreign and security policies with regard to, and in, the United Nations. In the sixth and last section, it seeks to explore the future place and role of Europe in the UN. In his conclusion, the author suggests that Europe has no choice but to remain loyal to the idea of a multilateral international system based on the fundamental rules of the UN Charter. Intellectually and conceptually, the EU and the UN are built on the same foundations, so that a failure of multilateralism on the global level would necessarily have negative repercussions on the European project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1995 the Council of Europe, as part of the revitalization process of the European Social Charter, adopted a Protocol providing for a system of collective complaints. The Protocol came into force in 1998. So far 23 complaints have been lodged under it. The aim of this article is to critically examine the practical operation of this collective complaints system during its first five years. After placing the system in a general human rights context by giving an overview of mechanisms for ensuring compliance with other treaties concerned with economic and social rights, the article then analyses the system for making collective complaints and its functioning in practice to date. The latter part of the article considers the likely utility and effectiveness of the system and concludes that without a major change in the practice hitherto of the Committee of Ministers, the system is unlikely to achieve its objectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present article seeks to explore how asylum law is formed, transformed and reformed in Europe, what its effects are on state practice and refugee protection in the Baltic and Central European candidate countries, and what this process reveals about the framework used by scholars to understand the dynamics of international refugee law. Arguably, an exclusive focus on EU institutions and their dissemination of regional and international norms among candidate countries through the acquis communautaire is misleading. Looking at the sub-regional interplay between Vienna and Budapest, Berlin and Warsaw, Copenhagen and Vilnius provides a richer understanding of the emergence of norms than the standard narrative of a Brussels dictate. Hence, to capture these dynamics, we will attempt to expand the framework of analysis by incorporating sub-regional settings, cutting across the divide between old and new Members, and by analysing the repercussions sent out by domestic legislation within these settings. While acknowledging that bilateral and multilateral relations are continuously interwoven, we conclude that bilateralism accounts for a greater degree of normative development and proliferation than multilateralism at EU level, and that domestic legislation as formed by sub-regional dynamics will remain the ultimate object of study for scholars of international refugee law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Shifting from an essentialist to a constructionist perspective on sexual identities, I move from a consideration of the homosexual legal subject, as presently treated under the European Convention on Human Rights, to the elaboration of a universal sexual legal subject. The universal sexual legal subject enjoys two basic rights: the right to choose sexual activity and sexual identity and the right to establish relationships and families in accordance with this choice. The possibility of including these two rights within the Convention presupposes their insertion into a set of sexually neutral standards which grant the universal sexual legal subject equality of choices. By examining the case law of the European Court and Commission of Human Rights on decriminalization of same-sex sexual activity, and family and relationship issues, I question the sexual particularity of the construction of the homosexual legal subject. This analysis of the case law provides the legal material and principles around which the insertion of the two sexual rights into the Convention is discussed. Both sexual rights are located within the right to respect for private and family life (Article 8). Equality of choices can only be guaranteed if the right to marry and found a family (Article12) is erased and marriage is 'privatised' into Article 8 on an equal footing with other sexual and relational choices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 'Global Compact', launched by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan in 1999, calls upon business to 'support and respect the protection of international human rights within their sphere of influence and [to] make sure their own corporations are not complicit in human rights abuses'. This article calls for a complementary 'Global Compact' between the UN and UN specialized agencies, as well as with other worldwide public organizations such as the World Trade Organization (WTO), so as to integrate universally recognized human rights into the law and practice of intergovernmental organizations, for example by requiring them to submit annual 'human rights impact statements' to UN human rights bodies and to engage in transparent dialogues about the contribution by specialized agencies to the promotion and protection of human rights. The globalization of human rights and of economic integration law offers mutually beneficial synergies: protection and enjoyment of human rights depend also on economic resources and on integration law opening markets, reducing discrimination and enabling a welfare-increasing division of labour. As a corollary, economic, legal and political integration are also a function of human rights protecting personal autonomy, legal and social security, peaceful change, individual savings, investments, production and mutually beneficial transactions across frontiers. The proposed 'integration approach' differs from the 1945 paradigm of 'specialized agencies' and state-centred international law focusing on the 'sovereign equality' of states rather than on human rights and democracy. It takes into account the regional experiences in Europe, that integration law enhances not only economic and social welfare but also the rule of law, the protection of human rights and democratic legitimacy at national and international levels of governance. As in European integration law, human rights should be recognized in global integration law as empowering citizens,... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The role of subsystems or special regimes, of which the European Community (EC) has been cited as the most striking example, within public international law has been a focus of attention of academic writing in recent years. Such regimes, strictly understood, exclude the operation of secondary rules of general international law, substituting their own rules. As well as providing a useful descriptive framework for certain aspects of international law, subsystems analysis poses the issue of the effect on the overall efficacy of the international law system of such regimes. Applied to the EC, use of the term 'subsystem' as strictly understood is debatable. A number of scenarios indicate the potential applicability and need for the regime of state responsibility of general international law. First, a member state may be liable in international law for breach of EC law where that EC law is an international agreement to which the Community is a party. Secondly, Simma's 1985 conclusions concerning the EC as a self-contained regime, assessed in light of recent developments in EC law on state liability, arguably remain applicable, suggesting that international responsibility for breaches of EC law by member states, in extremis, cannot be absolutely excluded. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the creation of the European Court of Justice. Purpose of the court; Differences between the created legal order and international law; Discussion on the international legal principle of restrictive treaty interpretation.

Evaluates the liability of member states for the breach of international agreement in Europe. Reports of international agreements with the European community; Characterization of community external relations by specific legal and political conditions; Influence of court decision on member state liability.

Focuses on foreign policy principles in the European Political Cooperation on human rights. Abandonment of Westphalian norms and respect for human rights; Submission of joint demarches; Adoption of common positions in international organizations.

Explores the concept of absolute rights in the Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights with reference to theoretical considerations and in the light of Strasbourg case law. Indications that the notion of absolute rights is nebulous because it involves an assessment of subjective factors; Importance of understanding the article within the wider context of the convention as a whole.

The article reflects the implications for international law of the changing internal role of the state and the nature and structure changes of the global economy in Europe. It mentions that the international lawyers have served as the handmaidens of the globalization changes. It notes that the international lawyers can be urged to devote more explicit attention to the globalization process and to explore systematically on the implications for international norms, institutions and processes.