State Succession to Bilateral Treaties: A Few Observations on the Incoherent and Unjustifiable Solution Adopted for Secession and Dissolution of States under the 1978 Vienna Convention

2015 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 13-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
PATRICK DUMBERRY
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Vienna Convention ◽  
Automatic Continuity ◽  
Independent State ◽  
New States ◽  
Independent States ◽  
State Succession ◽  
The One ◽  
Bilateral Treaties ◽  
Newly Independent States

AbstractThis article examines the question of state succession to bilateral treaties. It analyses the work of the International Law Commission undertaken in the 1970s and criticizes the solutions it has adopted in the 1978 Vienna Convention on Succession of States in Respect of Treaties for different types of state succession. I will argue that it is incoherent for the ILC to apply, on the one hand, the solution of automatic continuity for bilateral treaties in the context of secession and dissolution of states, while adopting, on the other hand, the solution of tabula rasa for Newly Independent States. In any event, it is plainly unjustifiable to apply the principle of automatic continuity to bilateral treaties. Thus, while the tabula rasa principle was adopted by the ILC for multilateral treaties to protect Newly Independent States’ right to self-determination, the same solution was chosen for bilateral treaties for different reasons. The rule of tabula rasa was adopted because of the particular nature of bilateral treaties and the basic requirement that the other party to an original treaty must consent to the continuation of that treaty with a Newly Independent State. There are simply no logical reasons as to why the tabula rasa principle adopted for Newly Independent States should not also find application for all new states. Bilateral treaties do not automatically continue to be in force as of the date of succession unless both states that are implicated explicitly (or tacitly) agree to such a continuation.

3. The law of treaties

2021 ◽  
pp. 33-48
Author(s):  
Ilias Bantekas ◽  
Efthymios Papastavridis
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
International Organizations ◽  
The Other ◽  
Vienna Convention ◽  
Written Form ◽  
The Law ◽  
The One ◽  
Definition Of

This chapter examines the rules of international law governing the birth, the life, and the death of treaties. Treaties, a formal source of international law, are agreements in written form between States or international organizations that are subject to international law. A treaty falls under the definition of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (VCLT), no matter what form or title it may have. The most important factor is that it sets out obligations or entitlements under international law. The VCLT enumerates the rules governing the ‘birth’, ie the steps from the negotiation until the entry into force of the treaty; the ‘life’, ie the interpretation and application of the treaty; and its ‘demise’, ie its termination. The two fundamental tenets are, on the one hand, the principle ‘pacta sunt servanda’ and, on the other, the principle of contractual freedom of the parties.

Declarations, Statements and ‘Disguised Reservations’ with Respect to the Convention on the Law of the Sea

2001 ◽  
Vol 50 (4) ◽  
pp. 767-786 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. D. M. Nelson
Keyword(s):  
United Nations ◽  
International Law ◽  
The Other ◽  
Law Of The Sea ◽  
Vienna Convention ◽  
Controversial Issues ◽  
Customary International Law ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Law ◽  
The One

The question of reservations was one of the ‘controversial issues’ facing the Third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea in drawing up the final clauses of the Convention. On the one hand it was argued that the integrity of the Convention must be safeguarded and that the ‘package deal’ must be protected from possible disintegration by the making of reservations. On the other hand the view was held that ‘allowance for the possibility of reservations is aimed at accommodating the views of the delegations who have maintained that they cannot become parties to the Convention unless the Convention permits them to exercise a right to enter reservations, in accordance with customary international law and as envisaged under the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties.’ In short the need to preserve the integrity of the Convention was pitted against the need to secure universal participation in the Convention.

scholarly journals Sergiy Fedunyak, Foreign and Security Policy of the Newly Independent States: Balancing between Two Power Centres

2014 ◽  
Vol 2 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 25-32
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Security Policy ◽  
Policy Agenda ◽  
Special Relations ◽  
Foreign And Security Policy ◽  
Independent States ◽  
Internal Policy ◽  
Soviet Legacy ◽  
The One ◽  
Newly Independent States

The article is focusing on the interplay between foreign policy agenda of the post-Soviet states at the one hand and internal policy developments in these countries at the other hand. One of the main explanations why the post-Soviet elites in non-Russian republics are pursuing the so-called multi-vectorialism in the foreign policy is that it serves as a strategy to maximize the most from having good relations both with East and West, and thus trying to perpetuate the monopoly of the power. Uzbekistan is a country in case, as Ukraine (and Moldova) is (or was) indeed also. At the same time, the special relations between the elites of post-Soviet countries and Moscow are very important in shaping the foreign policy agenda of these countries as a result of the Soviet legacy, i.e. the ties of the former Communist nomenklatura with Moscow are still playing a very important role in the most of the former Soviet republics.

Part III Observance and Application of Treaties, 17 Some Remarks on the Continuity of Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law Treaties

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pocar Fausto
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
International Law ◽  
International Humanitarian Law ◽  
Humanitarian Law ◽  
International Human Rights ◽  
Customary International Law ◽  
Independent States ◽  
State Succession ◽  
International Human ◽  
Newly Independent States

This chapter explores how the proliferation of newly independent states and state dissolution has resulted in greater complexity on the issue of state succession of treaty obligations. In particular, between the theories of tabula rasa succession and automatic state succession. The Human Rights Committee, the Convention on Succession of States in respect of Treaties, and the development of customary international law all bolster the imposition of automatic state succession with respect to international human rights and humanitarian law treaties. Automatic state succession is required by the special nature of human rights and humanitarian law. Thus, once a population is granted the protection of such rights, these rights devolve with the territory and a state cannot deny them. Furthermore, other international institutions have enforced these obligations resulting in the continuity of international human rights and humanitarian law treaties.

Treaties on Transit of Energy via Pipelines and Countermeasures

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Azaria Danae
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Dispute Settlement ◽  
The Other ◽  
Competing Interests ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Energy Charter Treaty ◽  
International Responsibility ◽  
The One ◽  
Bilateral Treaties ◽  
The Relationship

This monograph examines the relationship between treaties providing for uninterrupted energy transit and countermeasures under the law of international responsibility. It analyses the obligations governing energy transit through pipelines in multilateral and bilateral treaties, looking at the WTO Agreement, the Energy Charter Treaty, and sixteen bespoke pipeline treaties. It argues that a number of transit obligations under these treaties are indivisible, reflecting the collective interests of states parties. The analysis is placed in the historical and normative landscape of freedom of transit in international law. After setting out the content and scope of obligations concerning transit of energy, it distinguishes countermeasures from treaty law responses, and examines the dispute settlement and compliance supervision provisions in these treaties. Building on these findings, the work discusses the availability and lawfulness of countermeasures as, on the one hand, a means of implementing the transit state’s responsibility for interruptions of energy transit via pipelines; and, on the other hand, circumstances that preclude the wrongfulness of the transit state’s interruptions of transit. The competing interests of the transit state and those of the states dependent on the pipeline make this question one of the most controversial aspects of modern international law.

The Place of the Constitution in the Modern State

1967 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Akzin
Keyword(s):  
First World War ◽  
Modern State ◽  
World War ◽  
The First World War ◽  
New States ◽  
Independent States ◽  
Set Up ◽  
The One ◽  
To Receive ◽  
First World

Ever since the American and the French revolutions, it was taken for granted that a written, formal, Constitution was essential to the functioning of a modern State. Old-established States, as they moved toward modernization or away from absolutism, hurried to provide themselves with Constitutions. New States enacted Constitutions as a matter of course, as one of the first acts of a newly-found sovereignty, often copying them from available models and without pausing to consider to what extent the provisions copied would suit the particular characteristics and goals of their respective societies. The well-known process of “reception” of laws was followed by a similar trend to “receive” Constitutions. To have a formal Constitution well-nigh became a universal fashion, a symbol of modernism. In the aftermath of the First World War, only two groups of fully independent States remained without Constitutions. One of them comprised countries still in their pre-modern stage, in respect both of their political and of their general social set-up, and without pretensions to modernity: Afghanistan, Ethiopia (then Abyssinia), Saudi Arabia, Thailand (then Siam), Yemen; since then, each of these, bent on modernization, provided itself with some kind of constitutional chart. The other group consisted of the one and only Great Britain, looked upon by everybody as a case apart.

3. The law of treaties

2019 ◽  
pp. 30-43
Author(s):  
Ilias Bantekas ◽  
Efthymios Papastavridis
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
International Organizations ◽  
The Other ◽  
Vienna Convention ◽  
Written Form ◽  
The Law ◽  
The One ◽  
Definition Of

This chapter examines the rules of international law governing the birth, the life, and the death of treaties. Treaties, a formal source of international law, are agreements in written form between States or international organizations that are subject to international law. A treaty falls under the definition of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (VCLT) no matter what form or title it may have. The most important factor is that it sets out obligations or entitlements under international law. The VCLT enumerates the rules governing the ‘birth’, i.e. the steps from the negotiation until the entry into force of the treaty; the ‘life’, i.e. the interpretation and application of the treaty; and its ‘demise’, i.e. its termination. The two fundamental tenets are, on the one hand, the principle ‘pacta sunt servanda’ and, on the other, the principle of contractual freedom of the parties.

scholarly journals The Republic of Slovenia—Geographical Constants of the New Central-European State

1993 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ivan Gams
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
The Other ◽  
Independent State ◽  
Central European ◽  
East European ◽  
European State ◽  
Political Subject ◽  
The Republic ◽  
The One

AbstractThe territory of this new European state is crossed by strategically important passes, the lowest in the entire Alps, leading from the Danubian basin to the Mediterranean (Italy). Thus, the Slovenes had been under cultural, civilizational and political domination of centers from these two parts of Europe until 1918. Because the mountainous land forms, dissected also by valleys and basins, were prone to processes of diffusion rather than fusion, the Slovenes became a national and political subject of their own as late as the nineteenth century. From 1918 to 1990 they were joined to Yugoslavia, a South-East European state, and learnt, to their cost, all the differences between the cultures of West and Central Europe on the one hand, and South-East and Eastern Europe and the Near East on the other. Hence the plebiscite decision by the nation for an independent state.

3. The law of treaties

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ilias Bantekas ◽  
Efthymios Papastavridis
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
International Organizations ◽  
The Other ◽  
Vienna Convention ◽  
Written Form ◽  
The Law ◽  
The One ◽  
Definition Of

This chapter examines the rules of international law governing the birth, the life, and the death of treaties. Treaties, a formal source of international law, are agreements in written form between States or international organizations that are subject to international law. A treaty falls under the definition of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (VCLT) no matter what form or title it may have. The most important factor is that it sets out obligations or entitlements under international law. The VCLT enumerates the rules governing the ‘birth’, i.e. the steps from the negotiation until the entry into force of the treaty; the ‘life’, i.e. the interpretation and application of the treaty; and its ‘demise’, i.e. its termination. The two fundamental tenets are on the one hand, the principle ‘pacta sunt servanda’ and on the other, the principle of contractual freedom of the parties.

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