Soft Law in International Investment Law and Arbitration

In the more recent decades, international investment law (“iil”) and arbitration have been going through a process of recalibration prompted by both the intensification of cross-border capital flows and the States’ growing concerns over the potential restraints iil may impose upon the pursuit of public interests. The present contribution will pay attention to a specific feature that can be observed within these developments, i.e. the role played by soft law in investment arbitration and, more generally, under iil, also with a view to assessing the impact on the formation of binding international law of instruments formally devoid of normative force within the international legal order. After an introduction (Section 1), the contribution is articulated into four sections. Section 2 will first define the field of investigation. The case law of investment tribunals and the treaty practice under the more recent iia s will be then explored as to the reliance on soft law instruments for the purposes of settling procedural (Section 3) and substantive issues (Section 4). Some final remarks will close (Section 5).

Albanian National Museums: How to Overcome the Digital Gap Towards a Better National Heritage Promotion

Article 53 of the Vienna Convention of 1969 states that a treaty is considered invalid if it is in conflict with existing norms of jus cogens, and under Article 64 of the treaty becomes invalid if it conflicts with a norm youngest of the same nature. The case Nicaragua against the United States made clear that the notion of jus cogens is steadily entrenched in international law, however, is still necessary to determine accurately that power rates referred to in Articles 53 and 64 of the Vienna Convention. Jus cogens norms include more those norms relating to morality or natural law than with traditional positivist rates derived from State practice. In general, this includes making aggressive war, crimes against humanity, war crimes, sea piracy, genocide, apartheid, slavery, and torture.Jus cogens norms are norms of customary international law which are so important, it can not be changed through treaties. Under the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, any treaty that is contrary to jus cogens norms is invalid. Jus cogens norms are not listed, there is no catalog , their determined by any authoritative body, but these rates come from judicial practices and political and social attitudes, which are not values static. Jus cogens norm of unconditional right international, accepted and recognized by the international community norm from which no deviation is permitted. Unlike the common law, which traditionally requires the consent and It lets change obligations between states through treaties, norms jus cogens can not be violated by any state "through treaties international or local regulations or special customary, or even through general rules of customary not have the same normative force.

Environmental Accountability Practices of Environmentally Sensitive Firms in Ghana: Does Institutional Isomorphism Matter?

Operational activities of firms accumulate over time and adversely impact the environment, which, in turn, threaten the earth’s ecosystem and sustainable development agendas. Both internal- and external-specific pressures may play a crucial part in a firm’s decision to conform to environmental accountability practices (EAP). This paper examines the associations between institutional isomorphic forces and EAP among environmentally sensitive firms in Ghana. A representative sample of 166 environmentally sensitive firms were randomly selected and included in this study. A structured questionnaire was used to obtain relevant data for the analysis. Multiple regression models estimated the hypothesized crude and adjusted associations between EAP and isomorphic factors (mimetic, normative and coercive pressures). Initial adjustment with the isomorphic factors revealed significant associations of mimetic pressure which arises when companies engage in competition seeking superior performance and normative force with EAP but not coercive. A further control for the firm’s characteristics found a strong association of normative pressure with EAP. The findings suggest that mimetic and normative pressures may be essential in an attempt to stimulate EAP among environmentally sensitive firms in Ghana. Our results are broadly consistent with the predictions of institutional theory as it applies to EAP. Efforts to ensure environmental reporting among firms should strengthen normative and mimetic forces, particularly in the low- and middle-income settings.

Nature Versus the Common Law

This article recovers a debate, played out over the course of a century, in courts across the « common law world », over whether nature had normative force in water law. It explores areas of water law, such as the extent of public ownership in rivers and the effects of shifting watercourses on ownership, in which some courts, not without controversy, departed from the established rules of English law in order to make rules more appropriate, as they saw it, to the local environment.

Epistemic Blame and the Normativity of Evidence

The normative force of evidence can seem puzzling. It seems that having conclusive evidence for a proposition does not, by itself, make it true that one ought to believe the proposition. But spelling out the condition that evidence must meet in order to provide us with genuine normative reasons for belief seems to lead us into a dilemma: the condition either fails to explain the normative significance of epistemic reasons or it renders the content of epistemic norms practical. The first aim of this paper is to spell out this challenge for the normativity of evidence. I argue that the challenge rests on a plausible assumption about the conceptual connection between normative reasons and blameworthiness. The second aim of the paper is to show how we can meet the challenge by spelling out a concept of epistemic blameworthiness. Drawing on recent accounts of doxastic responsibility and epistemic blame, I suggest that the normativity of evidence is revealed in our practice of suspending epistemic trust in response to impaired epistemic relationships. Recognizing suspension of trust as a form of epistemic blame allows us to make sense of a purely epistemic kind of normativity the existence of which has recently been called into doubt by certain versions of pragmatism and instrumentalism.

Phenomenology, Deconstruction, and Critique. A Derridean Perspective

"Critical phenomenology is gaining currency as a progressive philosophy of emancipation, but there is no consensus on what its “criticality” entails. From a Derridean perspective, critique can be said to involve radical self-interrogation; a philosophy that questions its own conditions of possibility or grounds is one that opens itself to its auto-deconstruction. Deconstruction produces undecidability, however, which means that the philosophy in question can no longer account for its political claims or its normative force. This is the predicament in which critical phenomenology, like any other critical theory, will find itself when it takes its critical injunction to heart. Keywords: Critical theory, Derrida, Gödel, Kant, politics, post-phenomenology, undecidability "

Gendered Sexuality

Sexuality encompasses diverse sexual practices including sexual behaviors, their sequencing, meanings, effects, pleasures, and risks, sexual identities, preferences or orientations, and the social construction of sexual acts and communities over history. Sexuality is undeniably shaped by gender as an individual, interpersonal, and institutional force. It is also shaped by intersecting axes of difference including class, race, ethnicity, age, and body morphology or disability status. These are in turn also affected by sexuality. The study of gendered sexuality has been an interdisciplinary undertaking. The sociological field incorporates insights from anthropology, feminist philosophy, gender and women’s studies, history, LGBTQIA+ studies, cultural studies, media studies, psychology, and queer studies. Early sociology failed to recognize sexuality as a domain of social study, so the subject only gained relevance in sociology in the second half of the 20th century. Touchstone texts from the subfield’s formation often draw on non-sociological works as well as biological, medical, and psychoanalytic approaches. Newer advances in the study of sexuality were initially spurred by feminisms and activist-scholars from the lesbian, bisexual, and gay liberation movement. As such, alongside theoretical development and empirical study, some work in the discipline retains a normative approach, seeking to clarify and advance varying definitions of sexual liberation. Contemporary sociological research on sexuality focuses on resultant inequalities: whether between genders (mostly still conceived of as either men and women) between sexual orientations (mostly still understood as either straight or gay) or between different races or ethnicities. As such, sociological study on sexualities focuses on the collective consequences of sexuality as a varied and changing institutional and normative force.

Knowing Ourselves: Nietzsche, the Practice of Genealogy, and the Overcoming of Self-Estrangement

By centering Nietzsche’s philosophical methods, notably the practice of genealogy, this article addresses how our moral values developed, and how, while they once worked to address certain needs, these values now may perpetuate our self-misunderstandings. In conversation first with Nehamas and Geuss, and then with Reginster, I reconstruct the two dominant conceptions of the practice of genealogy in Nietzsche Studies. I argue that when history is plainly in view, authors have a tendency to remove necessity and psychology from the picture; when necessity and psychology are sharply in focus, commentators are likely to lose sight of history. In keeping all dimensions in the picture, I argue that we obtain a richer and more textured account of the genealogical mode of inquiry. Moreover, I demonstrate that as a psycho-historical mode of inquiry, the normative force of genealogy is immanent to the system of evaluation that is under consideration, which gives Nietzsche’s version of the philosophical practice of genealogy an advantage over more contemporary accounts.

The Reason-Giving Force of Requests

How do we change the normative landscape by making requests? It will be argued that by making requests we create reasons for action if and only if certain conditions are met. We are able to create reasons if and only if doing so is valuable for the requester, and if they respect the requestee. Respectful requests have a normative force – it will be argued – because it is of instrumental value to us that we all have the normative power of creating reasons by making requests. The normative power has the potential for creating and shaping valuable interactions and relationships for the requester and the requestee. This potential could not be realized if we did not have the normative power of making requests. It will also be shown why this account of the normative force of requests should be preferred to the two alternative accounts of the reason-giving force of requests that have been put forward by James H.P. Lewis and David Enoch.