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The Agreement on Port State Measures and follow-up national and regional implementation measures are well-intentioned to build up global resistance to illegal fishing. As the world’s busiest landing and transit hub, China has recently begun to take action to rein in the negative impacts of illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing on its fishing ports. Without treaty ratification and expansive cooperation with other States, that burgeoning effort is nowhere near to greening China’s intrastate and interstate seafood commerce. The widely asserted advantages of information and communication technology signal both an opportunity and challenges for China to overcome its non-ratification and minimal-coordination inertia. Localised and sector-specific trials of electronic monitoring, reporting, and traceability are symbolic of China’s progressive modernisation agenda on fishing port management. Scalability is the next test for electronic port State measures to expand coverage and generate coordinated gains from a holistic closed-loop and information-based paradigm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We consider non-cooperative bargaining over a fixed surplus between two groups that may differ in size and the supermajority threshold they employ for within-group ratification. We find that total allocation to a group does not depend on group size and increases with the supermajority threshold. We use the Gini coefficient to study within-group inequality as an outcome of interest and find that inequality increases with group size and decreases with the supermajority threshold. Finally, we study delegation by concentrating the ability to influence proposals within a subset of group members. Delegation to a subgroup decreases the group's total allocation because non-delegates accept lower allocations. Inequality is higher if delegation is employed, and it is decreasing in the size of the delegate committee. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the relationship between domestic legislative veto players and human rights treaty commitment. While research connects legislative veto players with ratification delays, I argue that legislative veto players also shape the timing of nonbinding treaty signature. Confronted with the possibility of ratification delay or rejection, executives in states requiring legislative approval for ratification sign treaties earlier as signature does not require the legislature. The results of quantitative analyses strongly support the argument. Examining the treaty signature timing of four core UN human rights treaties (ICCPR, CAT, CEDAW, and CRC), I find an overall significant and positive relationship between the requirement of legislatures to approve ratification and earlier treaty signature timing. Executives are responding to legislative veto player delays by speeding up treaty signing. This article contributes to the study of international law and domestic politics by further connecting ratification approval processes to commitment timing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Treaties are a fundamental tool of international politics. Therefore, existing literature has long investigated their ratification, the act through which an actor commits itself to the treaty's content and its determinants. However, we believe this scholarship has three substantial limitations: a lack of comprehensive assessments of the differences between bilateral and multilateral treaties, a limited attention to small and middle powers, and a substantial neglect of the impact of cabinet ideology. We address these gaps by exploring the dynamics of treaty ratification in Italy. Our analysis covers all the treaties signed and ratified by Italian policymakers between 1994 and 2022 that underwent parliamentary approval. We find that multilateral treaties take, on average, more time to get ratified than bilateral ones. Treaties regarding areas such as environment and human rights are also subject to longer ratification processes. The presence of left-wing cabinet coalitions tends to increase the likelihood of ratification. Through these findings, the article contributes to the understanding of treaty commitment in middle powers. It also provides an innovative point of view in the debate on Italian foreign policy and its domestic drivers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following the Irish War of Independence, 1919–21, and the ratification of the Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1922 the Irish Free State left the United Kingdom. Its leaders had been revolutionaries, whose explicit objective had been to overturn British authority in Ireland. Whilst the British ceded control of most of the island to the new state, an Anglo-Irish, Protestant, elite remained. The Royal Dublin Society (RDS) was the most prominent institution of it. As such, it might be expected that relations between the RDS and the new Irish state would be adverse. However, they were excellent. Drawing largely on the recently catalogued RDS archive, this article explains a seeming incongruity. It does so with general reference to the theme of agricultural development and specific reference to the agendas of the RDS and the new state; the role of key figures; the British foot-and-mouth disease crisis of the 1920s; and the response to partition. It also tests the academic discourse on what the Irish Revolution represented in socio-political terms, and the position of the former Protestant plutocracy in post-independence Ireland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The vision of the African Medicines Agency (AMA) is to ensure that all Africans have access to affordable medical products that meet internationally recognized standards of quality, safety and efficacy for priority diseases/conditions. The AMA is being established by a treaty which had to be ratified by a minimum of 15 African countries. Although there was no deadline, the ratification process has been slower than expected. This study therefore analysed the rationale, perceived benefits, enabling factors and challenges of the AMA's establishment. This study was a qualitative, cross-sectional, census survey of the national medicines regulatory authorities (NRAs) of 45 African countries. The Heads of NRAs and a senior NRA staff member were contacted to complete self-administered questionnaires. The existence of mature NRAs, the desire to have harmonized regulatory systems, the presence of strong political will and appropriate advocacy to expedite treaty signing are all enabling factors for AMA treaty signing. The challenges reported include the fact that the process is slow and there is limited understanding of the process. Competing national priorities, changes in office bearers in the public system and stagnation of the process at the ministerial level were also challenges reported. This study has improved the understanding of the treaty signing and ratification process and the perceived benefits and enabling factors of signing and ratification from African NRAs' perspective. NRAs also highlighted challenges encountered in the process. Addressing these challenges will result in effective medicines regulation by galvanizing technical support, regulatory expertise and resources at a continental level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The idea of protecting the public interest by incorporating specific provisions in private contracts or in international treaties has been accepted in some legal systems. The provision of Article 139 of the Constitution of the I.R. of Iran concerning settlement or arbitration of public or state property is one such requirement. The international arbitration practice of the last forty years indicates, that except in cases where observance of article 139 is stipulated in the contract, arbitral tribunals have been reluctant to apply its limitations. Explicit or implicit references to the necessity of observing article 139 of the Constitution in the documents of ratification of bilateral investment treaties are a form of unilateral reservation by one party to the treaty. In the absence of stipulation as to the need for obtaining the authorization of article 139 in the text of the treaty, the principle of respect for the integrity of the bilateral treaty is applicable. Accordingly, it is feared that the unsuccessful experience of invocation by Iranian public law entities of the objections based on Article 139 in previous international commercial arbitration cases would be repeated in the field of investment arbitration in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although authoritarian regimes often repress the rights of women, many autocrats have committed to international treaties protecting women's human rights. Scholars have typically overlooked this engagement, focusing instead on autocrats' commitment (and violation) of treaties protecting civil, political, and physical integrity rights. Yet existing explanations for autocrats' ratification of these treaties—such as appeasing domestic opposition groups—do not necessarily apply to women's rights (von Stein 2013). As authoritarian international law is increasingly viewed as an important area of study (Ginsburg 2020), scholars should explore how authoritarian regimes navigate participation regarding women's rights issues, including their engagement with the main women's rights treaty, the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). After taking a closer look at how autocracies shape, commit, and challenge women's rights internationally, we suggest several research directions to build this area of study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 1970s, the world has witnessed a proliferation of international treaties championing the protection of wildlife. The effectiveness of those treaties, which together comprise international wildlife law (IWL), depends on their national implementation by individual states rather than on their number. National implementation of IWL ranges from legislative action, to resource allocation, to individual behavioural change. Inadequate IWL implementation can facilitate and even lead to wildlife crime. Therefore, examining how countries operationalise their commitments derived from IWL is important to understand the efficacy (or lack thereof) of wildlife treaties. The main goal of this article is to investigate the dynamics by which nations internalise international wildlife commitments into state law, by using Norway as a case study. The article thus explores the social dynamics that shaped the domestic legal action that Norway undertook after its ratification of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) and the Convention on the Conservation of European Wildlife and Natural Habitats (Bern Convention). The study is based on historical data documenting Norway's legislative processes derived from the conventions and historical records of the country's environmental conflicts. It applies Chambliss's sociology of law perspective on conflict to interpret the material. While many globalisation scholars hold that globalisation stripped states of legislative sovereignty, this article argues that Norway's wildlife policy is mostly dependent on clashes between national forces, rather than Norway conceding legislative powers to the international community. In other words, the tension between economic growth and ecosystem conservation determines how Norway implements IWL commitments. This article contributes to the literature on environmental regime effectiveness and the domestic impact of treaties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International relations scholarship assumes that states weigh the costs and benefits of treaty ratification. In human rights, the worse a particular state's record, the higher the presumptive costs of ratification and the lower the likelihood of ratification. But prior work neglects variation in the extent of obligation that different treaties create. In this article, we argue and demonstrate that (1) human rights treaties differ substantially in the scope and scale of the obligations they contain, (2) this variation can be measured, and (3) it matters for ratification. Treaties that create a larger number of demanding obligations imply greater potential costs of compliance for states. The larger the number of demanding obligations, the more grounds various actors will have to challenge a state's practices. We analyze innovative data on treaty obligations and commitments for the 10 core global human rights treaties to test our propositions, and we find strong support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Parties involved in transnational business naturally expose themselves to peculiar international risks, including the possibility of having aforeign court resolve theirfuture disputes. To reduce uncertainty, transnational contracts often contain a so-called "choice of court" (or "choice of forum") clause to dictate where future disputes should be resolved. Chosen courts, however, do not always enforce such clauses. Indeed, absent a convention or a treaty, the enforcement of a choice of court clause is purely a matter of national law and, in the case of federal tystems like the United States, even of sub-national domestic law. To guarantee predictability, several countries have ratified the Hague Convention of 30 June 2005 on Choice of Court Agreements (the 'Convention"), which aims at ensuring that the parties' choice will be respected. The United States, however, was not among them, and U.S. courts continue to apply a variety of tests to determine whether they willfollow the parties' selection of forum. This Article analyses recentjudicial decisions involving the enforceability of choice of court clauses in transnational agreements under the Convention (i.e., TLrmgassen & Co Limited v. Sixcap Financials Pte Limited, and Motacus Constructions Lid v. Paolo Castelli SpA), and under the internal laws of selected jurisdictions (France, United Kingdom, Florida, New York, and California). Such analysis aims to ascertain whether the Convention was successful in guaranteeing the enforcement of choice of court clause in transnational contexts, and whether the United States should finally ratify it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista de la Facultad de Derecho y Ciencias Políticas is the property of Revista Faculdad de Derecho y Ciencias Politicas and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

A key theory of environmental politics holds that states must achieve a certain level of economic development before environmental protection will occur. The assumption is that once people attain economic satisfaction, they are no longer willing to accept environmental degradation in return for a greater standard of living. Yet, numerous developing states ratify environmental treaties without achieving a median-level per-capita income. How do some states reach environmental goals that require some behaviour change without the assumed demands of the citizenry? This paper argues that judicial autonomy may be the key to bringing environmental protection to the poorest states in the developing world. Activist judges, free of political interference, can push through policies that are unpopular but serve the greater good. Reacting to this, governments may be more likely to sign and ratify international environmental agreements. Using patterns of ratification for two conventions, I find evidence in favour of the hypothesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Academics usually look for constitutional conventions in Westminster-style democracies, such as the United Kingdom, Canada, or Australia. Nevertheless, growing evidence from practice shows that constitutional conventions are similarly essential attributes of even substantially different political regimes. This article is the first paper to systematically deal with constitutional conventions in the Czech Republic. To be more specific, I identify eight existing constitutional conventions there: (1) respect for the parliamentary majority, (2) institution of a formateur, (3) simultaneous existence of two prime ministers, (4) new cabinet's statement of policy, (5) delegation of negotiation and ratification of international treaties, (6) appointment of a (vice-)governor of the Czech National Bank without a countersignature, (7) missing signature of the president under laws, and (8) single vice-chairperson of the Supreme Court. On one hand, the scrutiny shows that constitutional conventions play an already established and important role even in a Central European democracy. On the other hand, the lack of political respect for unwritten rules and the relative immaturity of Czech democracy confirm that constitutional conventions are as fragile (or as strong) as political actors allow. Thanks to these facts, the study of constitutional conventions in the post-communist country is a precious laboratory with universal findings even for long-existing democracies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Zeitschrift für Bankrecht und Bankwirtschaft is the property of De Gruyter and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This research note introduces the International Treaty Ratification Votes Database, which covers more than 6,000 votes on the ratification of international treaties in Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Slovakia, Spain, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the United States between 1990 and 2019. In addition, the database presents data on the voting behavior of ninety parties in eight of these countries, resulting in more than 11,000 party observations. The research note presents the two datasets with their two units of analysis, the parliamentary and the party level, and describes the main variables, reaching from descriptive vote and cabinet data to issue areas, comparative party family classifications, and actual voting records. Furthermore, we suggest avenues for using the data for future research on the domestic politics of foreign policy: Our data can be used to study patterns in the politicization of international treaties and organizations, ratification delays, legislative–executive relations, the party politics of foreign policy making, and the crisis of the liberal international order. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combatting violence against women and domestic violence (further: Istanbul Convention) became part of the Polish legal system on August 1, 2015. The ratification process of the Istanbul Convention was marked with difficulties from its very opening for signature. The provisions of the Convention have caused - and continue to arouse - a range of extreme emotions and doubts. The fierce dispute that has emerged over the implementation of the Convention in Poland at some point even led to action being taken for termination. As things have been to date, Poland has not terminated of the Istanbul Convention. Five years following ratification of the Convention, in March 2020, Poland submitted a report on the implementation of measures giving effect to its provisions into the Polish legal system, as required under the monitoring mechanism. Poland's report was considered by GREVIO, with an assessment made of Polish legislation in this regard and an evaluation report issued in June 2021. Notwithstanding the comments that Poland made to the GREVIO report, the key conclusions of the assessment should be highlighted as regards compliance of Polish criminal legislation with the standard of protection of women against violence, including domestic violence, under the Convention. Since the Convention was opened for signature, and in particular since its ratification, the Polish legislator has introduced a range of amendments to the Criminal Code aimed at raising the standard of protection for victims of domestic violence and of effective prosecution of offenders. This text highlights the most important of these changes and presents the current state of implementation of the Istanbul Convention into Polish criminal law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last 40 years, the international community has made considerable progress towards the regulation of inhumane conventional weapons (ICWs) by adopting treaties that regulate or ban these weapons. However, many states have still not joined these treaties or have joined them with a considerable delay. These ratification decisions cannot be satisfactorily explained by the existing literature on the origin of ICW treaties, which stress the role of global socialization processes. This article offers a theoretical argument that explains state decisions on the ratification of ICW treaties. It argues that while democracies and countries located in regions with high ratification rates are prone to ratify ICW treaties, an insecure external environment impedes or delays ratification. The argument also claims that security costs resulting from the characteristics of the individual treaties can modify the effects of these explanatory factors. To provide an empirical test for the argument, the article conducts a survival analysis that covers the ratification processes of the three existing ICW treaties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2013 the Marrakesh Treaty was agreed to allow the production and distribution of copies in accessible formats for people with difficulties, as well as cross-border sharing. The documentary research technique is used on the origin and implementation of the Marrakesh Treaty and an interview about it with 60 participants of a course on the Development of Collections in Libraries. All of them holding management positions in libraries in Spain, Guatemala, Mexico and El Salvador, countries in which said Treaty has been ratified. In May 2017, a political agreement was reached that opened the door to the ratification of the Marrakesh Treaty. In September 2021, it was ratified in 79 countries, but without achieving the desired success in its implementation. From the interview, deficiencies have been identified to avoid and proposals to be executed to achieve the expected impact. The objectives of the Treaty will not be achieved only with the modification of national laws, it is necessary the exchange of experiences on the part of the people who have dedicated years of work in this common good worldwide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay engages with the practice of anthologisation in contemporary Irish short fiction. It takes as its starting point Sinéad Gleeson's remark in The Art of the Glimpse (2020) that the anthology is a potentially generous art form since it constitutes "a gift" or "a gathering of possibilities" for the unsuspecting reader. The essay extends out from Gleeson's suggestive analogy to examine some of the ways that the anthological form allows established and emerging writers to be placed in generative company. There are complications, of course, as every instance of anthologisation is also an exercise in gatekeeping, which presupposes acts of negotiation, selection, ratification, and compromise. Anthologies play a critical role in the process of canon formation and in the delineation of literary heritage; they help to shape expectations of genre and form; and they reorient the textual environment in which stories are received and interpreted. This essay investigates these and related issues by looking at a selection of contemporary anthologies of Irish short fiction, focusing especially on the Faber series of New Irish Short Stories which began with the late David Marcus in 2005, and which most recently includes Lucy Caldwell's Being Various (2019). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the valuable economic benefits of tourism, it must be highlighted that the tourism industry is an important source of stress for the environment with the main influence on tourist destinations. The aim of this study is to investigate the elements of environmental sustainability in tourism as key factors in the competitiveness of tourism using entropy methods. According to the authors' knowledge, it is the first time that the entropy model applied to Environmental sustainability indicators, regarding entropy as a measure of non-uniformity among sustainability indicators of EU countries. The data of the EU were used and Environmental sustainability pillar of the Travel & Tourism Competitiveness Index. The results show that the total entropy of the competitiveness of tourism within the environmental sustainability sub-index of the EU countries speaks in favor of the uniformity of the indicators. The study also reveals significant differences among the EU27 in the domain of the Global Climate Risk index, Baseline water stress and Forest cover loss. Furthermore, convergence has been achieved so far in the indicators Red List Index and Environmental treaty ratification. Finally, the methodological approach of this study has the potential to be extrapolated worldwide, especially in the future era of global environmental problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is widely recognised that humankind is facing serious environmental challenges that can only be addressed and overcome through international cooperation and the creation of an appropriate legal framework that is compatible with EU legislation and in line with European best practices. Accordingly, since 2014, the approximation process with the EU environmental acquisinGeorgia starteddirectlyafter the signing of the “Association Agreement between the European Union and the European Atomic Energy Community and their Member States, of the one part, and Georgia, of the other part” (hereinafter “Association Agreement”), which is an obligation of the said EU-Georgia Association Agreement. However, on the way of legal approximation, in addition to the legislative progress, significant challenges were identified. Identification and overcoming of these challenges are a prerequisite for a successful environmental legislation and a national policy. The government of Georgia, through the Association Agreement, undertook the obligationto harmonise various, including environmental protection and climate change, directives (EU-Georgia Association Agreement, Article 306, 312). Ratification of the EU-Georgia Association Agreement created a longterm perspective for the development of the national policy in various fields, including the direction of environmental protection and climate change. The Association Agreement between Georgia and the European Union created a solid legal basis for the future law-making and law-enforcement process. Within the framework of this article, is discussed the way of transforming the Georgian environmental legislation after the entry into force of the Association Agreement, the challenges that exist in the process of legislative approximation in the environmental direction are identified, and the authors’ recommendations in order to overcome the mentioned challenges are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Latin American states have long been active participants in multilateral treaty making. However, the rich history of Latin American legal activism contrasts with debates about the degree to which these states commit to international agreements. We probe the existence of this purported 'commitment gap' by analyzing the signing and ratification of multilateral treaties. Are Latin American states less likely to ratify agreements they have signed than states from other world regions? Using survival analysis of an original dataset on multilateral treaties deposited with the UN Secretary-General, we find no difference between Latin America and North America/Europe in terms of ratification. If a commitment gap exists, it appears to be more evident in other regions, particularly East Asia, Africa, and the Anglo-Caribbean. To the extent that there is a 'commitment gap' at the regional level in Latin America, it is unlikely to be due to country-level factors such as domestic institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To provide accountability, Members of Parliament (MPs) are expected to publicly communicate European Union (EU) affairs. Yet, parliamentary communication of EU affairs remains underexplored and existing analyses are conflicting. Against this background, this article sheds light on what drives MPs to talk about the EU, utilizing a novel dataset based on over 20,000 plenary protocols from 17 parliaments during 2006–2019. The study highlights that EU mentions increase in connection to referendums, summits, treaty ratifications, and European elections. Additional drivers include transfers of authority to the EU level, EU legislation, and political incentives. The findings provide some nuance to more pessimistic evaluations of the EU's accountability deficit, but major legitimacy challenges remain concerning national elections and Eurozone integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A recent French reform, dated 15 September 2021, which entered into force on 1 January 2022, largely modifies the law of guarantees and security interests. It clarifies a certain number of rules, suppresses several security interests that appeared to be obsolete, and reinforces the protection of warrantors without neglecting the interests of creditors. Adopted to promote security, flexibility, and accessibility to French Law, and to enhance the efficiency of secured transactions, the reform has generally been perceived as successful. The purpose of this paper is to present the reform in an international perspective and to try to understand whether it fits the purpose it was assigned: to strengthen the attractiveness of French Law in the comparative landscape. We will demonstrate that, regarding a certain number of international instruments and foreign laws, the answer tends to be affirmative. The French Government might also seize this opportunity to include France in several international projects that it has, so far, stayed away from, such as the ratification of the Cape Town Convention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many scholars and courts have written about the historical background of the Second Amendment, either to emphasize its connection to state-level citizen militias or to argue that the Amendment protects an individual right to own and carry guns for self-defense. While many authors have mentioned the original congressional debates about the Second Amendment, the literature is missing a thorough, point-by-point analysis of those debates, situating each statement in Congress within the context of the speaker's background and political stances on issues overlapping with the right to keep and bear arms. This Article attempts to fill this gap by providing a methodical discussion of each comment or argument made in Congress when the Second Amendment was under consideration. This discussion addresses how each of the congressmen's comments connect to public statements made by the same members of Congress in the months that followed on related topics: taxation and public debt related to militias, the supply of available firearms and their legal status as private or public property, the institution of slavery, westward expansion, and especially the complications for each of these issues posed by the Quakers, who became the center of attention during the debates about the Second Amendment. These original congressional debates have taken on more importance following the Supreme Court's recent holding that courts should decide Second Amendment challenges based on historical evidence from the years immediately preceding and following ratification. While this Article does not take a position on current litigation over modern firearm regulations, the discussion here can offer courts and commentators new insights into the original public meaning of the Second Amendment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The dialogue of the Courts in the European Union could be a veritable centripetal force of integration around the shared values that govern the European constitutional order. This dialogue must be supported by appropriate instruments, as the power regarding the constitutional review of international treaties is regulated by the Romanian Constitution and by other Constitutions of the Member States. However, in Romania, the legislative framework and the actors involved as possible referral subjects determine a purely decorative nature of the power to review international treaties before ratification. In this study, we will analyze the constitutional developments in the matter, outlining regulatory insights for the effectiveness of this power of the CCR and for the strengthening of the judicial dialogue in the EU. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Hoping to stop the ratification of a treaty of incorporating union with England, late in 1706 the parish minister Robert Wylie quoted the Declaration of Arbroath in a draft manifesto for an armed uprising. Rather than seeing Wylie's manifesto as part of a perceived tradition of popular sovereignty rooted in the Declaration of Arbroath, this paper asks what his quotation reveals about this early modern moment. It confirms a growing awareness of the Declaration of Arbroath in Scottish political culture and its usefulness as patriotic rhetoric for Whigs and Jacobites alike, aided by the publication of English translations from 1689. It shows how Wylie used the Declaration to suggest that the pro-treaty majority in the Scottish parliament was a traitorous faction out of step with the mind of a nation bound by its covenant oaths and how this attack on the legitimacy of the estates went against more than a century of presbyterian efforts to bolster the authority of the parliament as a counter to Stewart power. Wylie's document thus confirms the rising relevance of public opinion in this era and its construction in terms of conscience and covenants; and underlines a key struggle in the making of the union between extra-parliamentary opinion, highlighted in petitions and weaponised through calls for recesses and special assemblies, and the stature of the Scottish parliament as the embodiment of the political nation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A specter is haunting The Hague—the specter of American federalism. On July 2, 2019, the Hague Conference on Private International Law finalized the Hague Judgments Convention. The Convention seeks to establish a global floor for judgment recognition and promote seamless recognition and enforcement of judgments between signatories. Although virtually all observers in the United States recognize the value and importance of ratifying the Convention, stakeholders cannot agree on how to implement it: by federal statute or by uniform state law. Proponents of a socalled “cooperative federalism” approach to implementation, principally led by the Uniform Law Commission (ULC), have previously derailed U.S. ratification of the Hague Convention on Choice of Court Agreements (COCA) by insisting that principles of federalism required implementation through uniform state law. This argument is wrong as a matter of doctrine and policy. It is time to put it to rest once and for all. This Note is the first piece of scholarship to squarely address the “cooperative federalism” argument as applied to the Hague Judgments Convention. It makes two principal arguments. First, it identifies the principles that ought to guide the implementation of a treaty on foreign judgments recognition and concludes that federal implementing legislation optimizes these interests. Implementation primarily by uniform state law is inferior and poses serious disadvantages. Second, the ULC’s primary legal objection to the implementation proposal for the COCA outlined by the State Department—that the doctrine of Erie Railroad Co. v. Tompkins prohibits federal courts sitting in diversity jurisdiction from applying federal rules of decision prescribed by federal statute—was meritless in 2012, and it is meritless now. If any objections remain to implementing the Judgments Convention by federal statute, they are about turf and ideology. To the extent that the relevant stakeholders want to accommodate those political objections, this Note concludes by briefly outlining areas for compromise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Sociologija/Sociology: Journal of Sociology, Social Psychology & Social Anthropology is the property of MOD International and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Industrial property rights and copyrights are two branches of the so called intellectual property rights. These rights in contemporary times have turned into a sought-after investment that generates strong and predictable cash flows. This imposed the achievement of consensus by the countries at the end of the 19th century, first with the Paris Convention for the protection of industrial property (1883) and then with the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works (1886). The fact of the very large number of ratifications of the above-mentioned acts of an international character and membership in institutions such as the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) is a clear indicator of the trends of a unification of rules for the national standardization of issues from industrial property. The legal regulation of industrial property, nowadays, constitutes a legal normality of national legislations. As long as the possession of separate laws for concrete rights from industrial property, it is considered to be the highest level of their legal regulation within a country. The protection of industrial property rights in the Republic of North Macedonia and the Federal Republic of Germany has been established at the constitutional level. As each legislation belongs to one of the different systems mentioned above, this is one of the reasons that prompted the authors of this paper to research precisely the comparative aspect of these two legislations in force. The authors intend to achieve this goal through the use of a selected number of research-scientific methods, first of all: analysis, synthesis, normative, comparative, historical, inductive and deductive methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of language in international agreements is very important to establish international cooperation. It is also noteworthy that according to the Indonesian law, the international agreements related to several matters adopted by the government shall be translated to Bahasa Indonesia. However, the terms contained in Indonesian national law, in Bahasa Indonesia, often tend to be different from the meanings contained in international law, such as the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties. Thus, they often have multiple interpretations. As such, the use of language, especially relating to international agreements, can be a trigger for legal disputes. In this regard, using a legal research method by analyzing the international legal instruments and Indonesian national law, this paper digs into the use of language related to the adoption of an international agreement to an Indonesian Law, especially regarding the terms of “ratification,” “accession,” and others. It is argued that there is a difference of perspective within the “adoption of an international agreement” regarding the terms of “ratification” and “accession” under the 1969 Vienna Convention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Treaties are a valuable tool for policymakers because they are both legally binding on, and symbolically powerful signals of, commitments of states that ratify. Why states choose to ratify treaties is unclear, although social pressures appear to play some role. This article argues that global performance indicators can influence the ratification process, but that the effect varies depending on where states fall on these measures. In the mid‐range of a scale, fast ratification has significant benefits and relatively few costs. However, indicators have less of a catalysing effect at the extreme ends of the scale, where the costs are higher and the benefits are lower. This article uses policy performance indicators as independent variables in duration analyses of the ratification of the United Nations Convention against Corruption (2003) and the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons Especially Women and Children (2000). It finds states in the mid‐range of the indicator are faster to ratify than states that are not ranked, whereas the other categories are statistically insignificant. These findings imply that indicators matter for those in the middle, but not as much for those at the extremes. This finding enriches our understanding of treaty ratification and has potential implications for performance metrics as a tool to promote policy change for those states in the middle, highlighting the strengths and limitations of indicators as a force for change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes the Colombian Armed Forces' operations in the 1932-1933 Colombian-Peruvian border conflict and the negotiations before and after the ratification of the Salomón-Lozano Treaty of 1922 between the two countries. To this end, a documentary review of press reports at the time and other historical sources is carried out to verify to what extent this conflict determined the bilateral relations between the two countries. The results show that Colombia's diplomatic and military strategy in handling the resolution of the conflict enhanced the development of the Colombian Armed Forces, positioning the country before the international community and the region as a strong nation with good diplomatic relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of International Relations / Uluslararasi Iliskiler is the property of International Relations Council and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

After the First World War, the Allied Powers shared the Ottoman lands with the Treaty of Sevres. However, the National Struggle that started in Anatolia prevented the implementation of the Treaty of Sevres. After the victory of the National Struggle, a new agreement had to be made to establish peace between Turkey and the Allied Powers. The loss of many of the advantages obtained in the Treaty of Sevres caused serious debates in the public opinion of the Allied Powers It took a long time for the Treaty of Lausanne to be approved by the British Parliament due to the British Government's desire to observe the situation in Turkey and the criticisms of the opponents of Lausanne. Sessions were held in both the House of Commons and the House of Lords to discuss the Treaty of Lausanne. One month before the Lausanne Treaty was ratified by the parliament, a final session was held in the House of Commons. In this session, the opposition argued that the Treaty of Lausanne created a crisis in the British Empire, as well as repeating its criticisms. Those who were against the Treaty of Lausanne tried to associate the attitude of the Dominions with the Treaty of Lausanne. Despite all the criticisms, the British Government defended the Lausanne Treaty and ensured that the treaty was ratified by the parliament. In this study, after the Treaty of Lausanne was signed, the discussions about the treaty were examined during the period until the treaty was approved by the British Parliament. Based on the session held in the House of Commons just before the treaty was ratified in the British Parliament, criticisms of the treaty in England and the defense of the British Government were evaluated. In this way, it has been revealed how the treaty occupied the British political agenda during the period between the signing of the Treaty of Lausanne and its ratification in the British Parliament. Thus, it is aimed to contribute to the studies on why the ratification of the Treaty of Lausanne was delayed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines and identifies the need to regulate the results of the absorption of constituent aspirations by the regional people's representative council to be included in the preparation of the regional budget for regional income and expenditures in order to realize prosperity. This study uses a normative legal research method which entirely uses secondary data. The study found the need to regulate the results of the absorption of the aspirations of the members of the Regional People's Representative Council to be urgent for the preparation of regional revenue and expenditure budgets, among others; 1) as an effort to welfare the people, through the functions given with the principle of exemplary which is very important in carrying out the mandate of the people as well as possible, 2) In the preparation of budget regional income and expenditure budget function is an important function as a legislative institution that has the authority to determine budget allocations needed by constituents through recess by absorbing and collecting constituent aspirations, 3) Process and schedule for preparing budget regional income and expenditure already listed in Permendagri No. 13/2006, as well as budget allocation in accordance with Minister of Home Affairs Regulation No. 21/2011 and Permendagri No.33/2017. Determination of policies regarding the budget is the authority of the executive, but in a further process, namely the determination of allocations and their ratification is the responsibility of the executive, The legislature has legislative powers. Thus, the executive and legislative bodies cooperate with each other in the budget preparation process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the emergence of various international justice narratives that operate as legal nonperformatives, making the law and law making seem liberatory. It shows that the ratification of a treaty may not qualify as a form of state expression or a speech act advocating human rights. Instead, it can be interpreted through semiotics as sending a signal about a stance. By examining this proleptic space, we can begin to make sense of what we cannot yet see, and perhaps begin to forecast whether the core tenets of international human rights will soon be reinvented or merely perpetuated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why do states commit to UN counterterrorism treaties? This article posits that state accession to UN counterterrorism treaties is likely informed by the nature of the terrorist threats a state faces, and consequently, the pressures that such threats generate from domestic and international audiences on the state to address (or appear to address) them. As such, we hypothesize that states ratify UN CT treaties for either material, needs-based reasons —to gain external assistance for counterterror capacity building—or for symbolic reasons —to visibly signal their commitment to fight terrorism in order maintain legitimacy, and mitigate reputational costs to both domestic and international audiences. To test these hypotheses, we use a newly compiled dataset of state accessions to the 19 UN counterterrorism treaties from 1970–2016, testing both our needs-based versus symbolic hypotheses, as well as more "traditional" explanations for state treaty accession. Across the universe of 19 UN counterterrorism treaties, our study implies that states may be more likely to ratify treaties as mechanisms to signal intent to address terror threats rather than to build threat-specific counterterrorism capacity. This research thus broadens both academic and policy-related understandings of state counterterror treaty ratification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on Kurdish elites and their quest for a Kurdish state during the Peace Conference that took place in Paris after the First World War. Cross-examining the British, French, Kurdish, and Ottoman sources, this paper shows that despite the failure to establish a Kurdish state in the aftermath of the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire the Kurdish elites, with their diplomatic and political experience and networking had equal, sometimes better, capacity to the leaders of other delegations in the Peace Conference. To demonstrate this, I fo - cus on Kurdish elites, who were experienced in the imperial statecraft, especially Şerif Pasha, Sheikh Abdulkadir, Emin Ali Bedirhan, and Süreyya Bedirhan, lay out the complex relations amongst them and describe their efforts to represent the Kurds from the beginning of the Peace Conference until ratification of Treaty of Sèvres on 10 August 1920. In spite of what the available literature suggests, Kurdish elites, using all the available tools at their disposal, negotiated effectively for a Kurdish state. The contribution shows that the Kurdish elites not only presented a series of arguments during the Peace Conference but also laid down the basis for the Kurdish na - tionalism of the decades to come, with a historical narrative and a cartographic imaginary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of European Integration History is the property of Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft mbH & Co. KG and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The main objective of the article is to analyze the course and consequences of the diplomatic negotiations for the signing and ratification of the Eastern Treaties between the Federal Government and the governments of the USSR, Poland and Czechoslovakia in the years 1969-1974. What is of great importance here is using new archive resources from the archive of German Liberalism in Gummersbach in this work. This enabled the author to present a new assessment of the influence of the FDP on the Eastern policy of the Federal Republic of Germany during the period presented. The author comes to the following conclusions: (1) The FDP played a fundamental role in the negotiations and ratification of the Eastern Treaties with the USSR (1970), Poland (1970) and Czechoslovakia (1973); (2) These treaties contained a clause not to use force in mutual relations; (3) The treaty with Poland also contained a border clause and in that sense it is to be regarded as a border treaty (Article I Paragraph 1 of the treaty of December 7, 1970). In this treaty, the Federal Republic of Germany recognized Poland’s western state border on the Oder-Neisse, as defined in the Potsdam Agreement; (4) The federal government has recognized this border in its own name (suo nomine) and not in name of a reunified Germany. The Warsaw Treaty therefore did not rule out the reunification of Germany in the indefinite future. At the same time, the Federal Government undertook not to assert any territorial claims against Poland in the event of reunification; (5) The western allies – which is very often overlooked in the specialist literature – had already forced the federal government in the secret memorandum of Acheson-Adenauer dated November 21, 1951 to agree to their definition of the reunification of Germany as an amalgamation of the Federal Republic, the GDR and both parts of Berlin accept. In return, the Federal Republic received a. o. the contractual obligation of the Western powers that the Federal Government would participate in a peace settlement in the future (Article VII Paragraph 1, 3 of the Germany Treaty of Mai 26, 1952). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work analyzes the practice of the International Criminal Court (ICC) as the most ambitious project aimed at combating and preventing mass violations of human rights in inter-and intrastate conflicts. Sure thing, such an institution has not emerged from anywhere, but it is the culmination in the progress of international criminal law evolution. That is why the progress that was made over the centuries and historical conditions forcing its establishment cannot be ignored. This article studies the formation of the International Criminal Court through the prism of the history of previous models of judicial bodies bringing to justice war criminals. Moreover, it analyses the historical conditions and international debates around the establishment of a permanent international criminal court. Conclusions focus on the problems that arose during the establishment of the ICC, and the ways in which they affect ICC activities nowadays. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The European Court of Justice (ECJ) made a ground-breaking shift away from the current system of investor–State dispute settlement (ISDS) by rendering its judgment in the matter of Achmea v Slovak Republic. However, since March 2018, a large and ever-growing number of investment tribunals have found that the Achmea judgment does not deprive them of arbitral jurisdiction. Against this background, the aim of the present article is to analyse the effects of the Achmea judgment on the jurisdiction of tribunals to settle intra-European Union (EU) investment treaty disputes. By taking due account of the reasoning conducted by the ECJ, the scope of the Achmea jurisprudence will be clarified. It is concluded that the incompatibility of intra-EU ISDS with EU law concerns all intra-EU investment treaties, including article 26 of the Energy Charter Treaty (ECT). On this basis, we ask whether, and to what extent, the applicability of the Achmea judgment is relevant to arbitral jurisdiction. Considering the law applicable to the arbitration agreement, we conclude that International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) tribunals and those seated outside the EU remain competent to settle intra-EU investment disputes. In contrast, the Achmea judgment renders ISDS clauses contained in intra-EU investment treaties inoperable if the tribunal is seated within the EU. The article closes with an outlook that puts these conclusions into perspective by considering recent developments such as the EU Member States' ratification of a multilateral termination treaty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]