From Contract to Treaty. The Legal Transformation of the Spanish Succession 1659–1713

Author(s):  
Frederik Dhondt

The problem of the Spanish Succession kept the European diplomatic system in suspense from 1659 until 1713. Statesmen and diplomats tackled the question. Their practical vision of the law was a necessary complement to legal doctrine. Louis XIV and Emperor Leopold I used incompatible and absolute claims, which originated in private law and Spanish succession law. At the Peace of Utrecht, these arguments completely dissolved. The War of the Spanish Succession thus not only redesigned the political map of Europe: It altered the norm hierarchy in public law, strengthening international law as the framework of the 'Société des Princes'.

Author(s):  
Francesco Palermo

In public law, the concept of property plays, arguably, a much more limited role than in private law. At a closer look, however, a rather different picture emerges. In fact, in public (national and international) law, property is less (if at all) regulated, but not less important than in private law. Rather, it is implicitly assumed and developed in collective rather than individual terms. Especially in the nation state construct, territory is the property of a state and the state is the property of a group of people (the dominant nation), whose power to control a territory is called sovereignty. For this reason, when the question emerges of how to deal with a territory predominantly inhabited by a minority group, the answers by different actors involved might be diametrically opposite. This is essentially because the link between people and territory is always framed in terms of ownership: who “owns” a territory? And how to deal with those who inhabit the territory without (being seen as those) owing it? This essay explores the responses to such questions. The focus will be on challenges posed by autonomy regimes as instruments for the accommodation of minority issues, including the evolving concept of territory. Against this background, the different understandings of the link and the recent practice of selected international bodies will be analysed, leading to some concluding remarks. It will be argued that territory is an unavoidable point of reference, but many aspects are not sufficiently addressed, such as the issue of the addressees of such arrangements, the evolution that minority-related concepts are facing in the present era, marked by the challenge of diversity and the overall understanding of territorial arrangements.


Author(s):  
Karen J. Alter

In 1989, when the Cold War ended, there were six permanent international courts. Today there are more than two dozen that have collectively issued over thirty-seven thousand binding legal rulings. This book charts the developments and trends in the creation and role of international courts, and explains how the delegation of authority to international judicial institutions influences global and domestic politics. The book presents an in-depth look at the scope and powers of international courts operating around the world. Focusing on dispute resolution, enforcement, administrative review, and constitutional review, the book argues that international courts alter politics by providing legal, symbolic, and leverage resources that shift the political balance in favor of domestic and international actors who prefer policies more consistent with international law objectives. International courts name violations of the law and perhaps specify remedies. The book explains how this limited power—the power to speak the law—translates into political influence, and it considers eighteen case studies, showing how international courts change state behavior. The case studies, spanning issue areas and regions of the world, collectively elucidate the political factors that often intervene to limit whether or not international courts are invoked and whether international judges dare to demand significant changes in state practices.


Author(s):  
Julia Hörnle

Jurisdiction is the foundational concept for both national laws and international law as it provides the link between the sovereign government and its territory, and ultimately its people. The internet challenges this concept at its root: data travels across the internet without respecting political borders or territory. This book is about this Jurisdictional Challenge created by internet technologies. The Jurisdictional Challenge arises as civil disputes, criminal cases, and regulatory action span different countries, rising questions as to the international competence of courts, law enforcement, and regulators. From a technological standpoint, geography is largely irrelevant for online data flows and this raises the question of who governs “YouTubistan.” Services, communication, and interaction occur online between persons who may be located in different countries. Data is stored and processed online in data centres remote from the actual user, with cloud computing provided as a utility. Illegal acts such as hacking, identity theft and fraud, cyberespionage, propagation of terrorist propaganda, hate speech, defamation, revenge porn, and illegal marketplaces (such as Silkroad) may all be remotely targeted at a country, or simply create effects in many countries. Software applications (“apps”) developed by a software developer in one country are seamlessly downloaded by users on their mobile devices worldwide, without regard to applicable consumer protection, data protection, intellectual property, or media law. Therefore, the internet has created multi-facetted and complex challenges for the concept of jurisdiction and conflicts of law. Traditionally, jurisdiction in private law and jurisdiction in public law have belonged to different areas of law, namely private international law and (public) international law. The unique feature of this book is that it explores the notion of jurisdiction in different branches of “the” law. It analyses legislation and jurisprudence to extract how the concept of jurisdiction is applied in internet cases, taking a comparative law approach, focusing on EU, English, German, and US law. This synthesis and comparison of approaches across the board has produced new insights on how we should tackle the Jurisdictional Challenge. The first three chapters explain the Jurisdictional Challenge created by the internet and place this in the context of technology, sovereignty, territory, and media regulation. The following four chapters focus on public law aspects, namely criminal law and data protection jurisdiction. The next five chapters are about private law disputes, including cross-border B2C e-commerce, online privacy and defamation disputes, and internet intellectual property disputes. The final chapter harnesses the insights from the different areas of law examined.


2015 ◽  
Vol 64 (4) ◽  
pp. 905-933
Author(s):  
Jarrod Hepburn

AbstractThe UNIDROIT Principles of International Commercial Contracts have appeared in a small but steady trickle of investment treaty arbitrations over the last decade. This article considers the use of the Principles by investment tribunals on questions of both domestic law and international law. It suggests that reference to the Principles can play an important legitimating role on questions of domestic law, but that this should not replace reference to the applicable law. On questions of international law, reference to the Principles may be justified by resort to the general principles of law. However, the article contends that there is only a limited role for the UNIDROIT Principles where the primary and secondary rules of investment protection are already found in treaties and custom. In addition, while general principles have historically been drawn from domestic private law, there is increasing recognition that general principles of public law are more relevant to investment arbitration. Given this, arbitrators resolving questions of international law must be cautious in references to the UNIDROIT Principles, a quintessentially private law instrument.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jasmina Krštenić ◽  

Giving attention to the legal relations in special international public law branch which its existence connects to the biggest part of the Planet, unresearched completely, it is absolutely important for modern way of living. In a period of questioning of boundaries and possibilities of future existence of ancient principles of legitimate rule, we need to pay attention to, at least for a glance, issues which tangle the subjects of legal relations regulated by rules under law of the sea. Lot of people use sea routes, a certain part of population of continental states uses the benefits of the sea although they do not ask themselves about order and way of functioning that huge system which demands obeying rules defined on international level. Struggle to reach an agreement was long and difficult, results are visible and used, and agreed terms and established rules, could be changed. It is important to know certain circumstances, some demands and the essence of the agreement reached. The sea as a road, the source of life, and this time, the source of international rules governing legal order on sea’s surface and endless depths. We will get acquainted with the basics of the law of the sea and some sorts of sea related services. We will consider some problems and ways of solving these problems with the provision of proposed guidelines for future action within the framework of the international law of the sea.


Antichthon ◽  
1972 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 63-73
Author(s):  
R.A. Bauman

Luigi Labruna makes a number of proposals, in his recent Vim fieri veto: alle radici di una ideologia, of considerable importance to both the legal and the political history of the later Republic. The basic theme of the work is the possessory interdict uti possidetis, but in furtherance of his avowed purpose of illuminating the juridical, political, economic and social background to this early possessory remedy the author moves freely and knowledgeably in a number of fields. It is well that it should be so. The delimitation of the boundaries of Roman private law in a purely juridical setting is and will always be an indispensable and rewarding discipline, but it is more and more coming to be realized that the law of a given society needs also to be seen in a wider ambit, not only for the better understanding of the law but also for the better understanding of the society. His successful application of this wider approach to the rather austere problems of the possessory interdicts marks Labruna’s work out as one of considerable significance and merit.


Chapter 3, after describing general principles of international law and the relationship between international law and domestic law, focuses on the hitherto neglected subject of private commercial law conventions. Textbooks on international law invariably focus on public law treaties. By contrast this chapter addresses issues relating to private law conventions. It goes through the typical structure of a private law convention, the interpretation of conventions and the treatment of errors, and the enforcement of private conventional rights against States. The subject of private law conventions and public law has become of increasing importance with the appearance in several private law instruments of provisions of a public law nature designed, for example, to ensure that creditors’ rights are not enforced in a manner that adversely affects the public interest or State security. Reservations and declarations are also discussed, together with the subject of conflicts between conventions.


Author(s):  
Edward McWhinney

“The prophecies of what the courts will do in fact, and nothing more pretentious, are what I mean by the law.”OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, JR.,The Path of the Law (1897).The “WINDS OF CHANGE” in the Soviet Union since Stalin's death — what, in a legal context, the leading journal Soviet State and Law has called the programme “for complete elimination of the harmful consequences of the personality cult in Soviet jurisprudence” — have done much to liberate Soviet international law thinking from the at times overly rigid positivism and rather sterile orthodoxy which had dominated it, in common with Soviet general legal doctrine, from the time of Pashukanis' downfall in the late 1930's, onwards through the period of Vyshinsky's intellectual dominance almost to the present day. For the purpose of analysis and appraisal of the contemporary state of Soviet international law doctrine and practice, both as to its main points of accord and also its main policy conflicts and differences, certain preliminary propositions can be advanced as to the nature and condition of Soviet international law in general over the years since the October Revolution.


2019 ◽  
Vol 65 (2) ◽  
pp. 207-222
Author(s):  
Hanna Stakhyra

The applicability of private law of de-facto regimes poses particular conflict-of-law challenges for the state and its respective authorities involved, in particular courts. This article analyses these challenges in the light of the Luhansk and Donetsk National Republics in Ukraine, and further illustrates problems arising from the (non-)recognition of de facto regimes in the context of other territories such as Taiwan and Moldova, and Crimea, among others. The article concludes that recognized states cannot simply ignore the existence of a de facto regime territory. The political nonrecognition of such territories should not be an obstacle to the application of the law to protect the rights of individuals in private relationships.


2016 ◽  
Vol 65 (3) ◽  
pp. 523-540 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roy Goode

It is a remarkable circumstance that with a few honourable exceptions all writers on international law in general and treaty law in particular focus exclusively on public law treaties. Private law conventions, including those involving commercial law and the conflict of laws, simply do not come into consideration. Yet such conventions, like public law conventions, are treaties between States and are governed by the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties and many of them are of great significance. Their distinguishing feature is, of course, that while only States are parties, private law conventions deal primarily, and often exclusively, with the rights and obligations of non-State parties. So while the treaty is international it does not for the most part commit a Contracting State to any obligation other than that of implementing the treaty in domestic law by whatever method that State's law provides, if it has not already done so prior to ratification.


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