Differences in the Arrangement of Leave Outside the State Responsibility for Presidential Candidates and Incumbent Regional Head Candidates Based on the Equality Before the Law

The existence of differences in leave arrangements outside of the state's responsibility for incumbent candidates in the Presidential and Vice Presidential Election (pilpres) and the General Election of Regional Heads and Deputy Regional Heads (pemilukada) have an impact on the sense of justice in granting political rights attached to citizens. The research describes the arrangements' differences from the equality before the law's perspective. The type of research used is normative legal research with descriptive legal research methods. The problem approach used is statutory, comparative, and conceptual approaches. The data used in this research is secondary data, with a literature study method. Furthermore, the technique used in this research is to collect, identify and analyze the data presented in a qualitative descriptive form. The results of the research and discussion show that there are differences in leave arrangements outside of the state's responsibility for presidential and vice-presidential candidates and incumbent regional heads and deputy regional heads in the presidential and regional elections. Theoretically, every legislation formulation and application must be based on the principle of equality before as a form of social justice.

“Rapport Duclert” and France’s Responsibility for the Genocide in Rwanda

In March 2021 the Duclert Commission, a commission of French experts appointed by President Macron, presented their report which immediately became the subject of academic and political debates. The Report examined the French involvement in Rwandan genocide in 1994, and pointed to the major ethical, legal and political dilemmas accompanying states’ involvement into the affairs of other states. We seek to identify major topics raised by the French media in relation to the report, and how possible reconciliation between France and Rwanda was presented in French periodicals. Through post-colonial lenses to the study of states’ foreign policy, we examine how the French role in the genocide was seen in media discourses, and how the media addressed such painful questions as accepting/avoiding state responsibility for its actions. Using qualitative content-analysis, we studied articles from French media outlets Le Monde, Libération and Le Figaro in the period of late March 2021 ‒ July 2021, as well as a few randomly selected articles from other French outlets to have a more complete picture of public debates across a political spectrum. The article concludes that while the media stressed the importance of the Committee’s work for bilateral relations, still, there is no consensus in the French society over France’s responsibility for the genocide: whether acknowledging state responsibility would be a manifestation of weakness and a threat to state security, or masking of certain colonial inclinations.

The Law on State Responsibility and the World Trade Organization

This paper examines the role of general international law in the World Trade Organization (WTO) regime, using the rules on state responsibility as a case study. It identifies and discusses instances in WTO case law where such rules were applied directly or were taken into consideration in interpreting relevant WTO provisions. The analysis demonstrates that direct application of general international law for the determination of indispensable matters not regulated by the WTO Agreements is part of the inherent powers of WTO adjudicative bodies. Moreover, under Article 3(2) Dispute Settlement Understanding and Article 31(3)(c) Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, WTO adjudicative bodies have an obligation to take into account general international law in interpreting relevant WTO provisions. The paper delineates the methodology for assessing the interaction between general international law and WTO law and highlights the importance of adhering to this methodology to provide clarity and legal certainty regarding the scope and content of WTO obligations.

International Law of State Responsibility and COVID-19: An Ideology Critique

Despite minimal prospects of success, international lawyers spent the first few months of the global pandemic discussing whether the rules of state responsibility could be invoked against states, especially China, for their acts and omissions regarding COVID-19. In this piece, we take these debates seriously, if not necessarily literally. We argue that the unrealistic nature of these debates does not make them irrelevant. Rather, we propose an ideology critique of state responsibility as a legal field. Our approach is two-fold. First, we argue these debates need to be situated within the rise of geopolitical competition between the US and its allies on the one hand and China on the other. In this context, state responsibility is always laid at the feet of one’s opponents. Secondly, we posit that my emphasising the role of states, recourse to state responsibility renders invisible the role of transnational processes of capitalist production and exchange that have profound effects on nature and set the stage for the emergence and spread of infectious diseases. Drawing from the work of the geographer Neil Smith, we argue against the ‘naturalisation’ of disasters performed much of the international legal discourse about COVID-19.

State Responsibility, International Law and the COVID-19 Crisis

Disruptions caused by the global spread of COVID-19 have generated different types of responsibility claims at both the domestic and international levels. Alleged breaches of the law have resulted from the immediate reactions to the pandemic’s emergence and spread, as well as from less proximate adjustments made to the ongoing crisis. This contribution begins by briefly surveying the types of responsibility relevant to the crisis with a view to identifying systemic legal issues, particularly at the international level. It then focusses on the law of state responsibility for internationally wrongful acts, not to resolve the various claims that are or can be made, but in order to identify what this crisis reveals about the trends in the law of responsibility, the opportunities for its invocation, and indeed, state tactics in engaging with this body of law. Just as the pandemic has been revelatory of social trends, so too it has highlighted trends in the law and its operation.

Solving or Not Solving Problems

The three articles featured in this issue may not appear to be related, but within their varying contexts, I found myself teasing out several chords that resonate throughout them, and one, in particular, struck me as notable. Directly or indirectly, these articles (as well as the report) all address the notion of problem-solving in some shape or form. Whether a historical account of protest as an attempt to solve issues of discontent among fur trade workers in Russian America, approaches to discussing climate change in northeastern Siberia, coping with failing infrastructure and the negotiation of corporate versus state responsibility—or dealing with COVID lockdowns and scholarly knowledge exchange at present—the articles in this issue all explore the confrontation of problems and how they might be solved.