Julian Wyatt (2019): intertemporal linguistics in international law: beyond contemporaneous and evolutionary treaty interpretation

Intertemporal treaty interpretation has undergone decades of discussion with few consensuses being reached. In this background, interdisciplinary analysis has come to the stage and injects innovation into treaty interpretation. According to Julian Wyatt’s Intertemporal Linguistics in International Law: Beyond Contemporaneous and Evolutionary Treaty Interpretation, treaty terms can be divided according to semantic features with temporal sense-intention (TSI) examined, based on which one can figure out whether dynamic or static interpretation shall be applied. It offers systematic guidelines and new solutions to intertemporal treaty interpretation, which is conducive to promoting international rule of law.

Defining Sovereign Assets for Immunity from Execution: International Rule of Law Versus International Law - Based Rule of Law

Sovereign assets receive restrictive sovereign immunity based on their purpose and/or use for execution of States’ commercial liabilities. The forum States’ courts decide the question of immunity of these assets. Due to lack of effective international conventions, these judgements result at inconsistent outcomes. Rule of law can be applied to mitigate this inconsistency. However, the objectives of rule of law vary for the national and the international legal order. Moreover, the divergence in group-interests of States and mandate of international organizations have failed to agree on a uniform definition of international rule of law. Thereby, this paper suggests international law-based rule of law as an alternative approach. International law-based rule of law aims at achieving the same objectives as domestic legal order, but, by the tools of international laws. Finally, it proposes to develop an inter-States consensus-based model law to have uniform principles of sovereign assets’ immunity in international law.

Judicial avenues for upholding the international rule of law: the downing of MH17 case

The article seeks to identify the means in which key principles of the international rule of law are applied in practice. It postulates that the plurality of available legal remedies fosters the international rule of law development. The article evaluates the ongoing and potential legal proceedings against States in relation to the 2014 downing of flight MH17 and their interplay. With the exception of the individual and the Dutch inter-State application, three international bodies are currently tackling the dispute from a perspective wider than the MH17 incident – namely, the situation in Eastern Ukraine (and Crimea). The objective of this article is to showcase the different efforts to bring justice by ramifying the MH17 case within them. The article chiefly focuses on the ongoing proceedings seeking State responsibility – the International Court of Justice (ICJ), and the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR).

An International Rule of Law

The “international rule of law” is an elusive concept. Under this heading, mainly two variations are being discussed: The international rule of law “proper” and an “internationalized” or even “globalized” rule of law. The first usage relates to the rule of law as applied to the international legal system, that is the application of the rule of law to those legal relations and contexts that are governed by international law. In this context, the term international rule of law is often mentioned as a catchphrase which merely embellishes a discussion of international law tout court. The international rule of law is here mainly or exclusively used as shorthand for compliance with international law, a synonym for a “rule based international order,” or a signifier for the question whether international law is “real” law. This extremely loose usage of the term testifies its normative and symbolic appeal although it does not convey any additional analytic value. The second usage of the rule of law in international contexts covers all other aspects of the rule of law in a globalizing world, notably rule of law promotion in its widest sense. The increasing interaction between national and international law and between the diverse domestic legal orders (through law diffusion and reception, often again mediated by international law) is a manifestation of the second form of the rule of law. The structure of this bibliography roughly follows this bifurcation of the Rule of Law Applied to the International Legal System and the Rule of Law in a Globalizing World. Next to these two main parts, three further, separate sections discuss questions that arise at the intersection of the two variants or are of crosscutting importance to the rule of law as a whole. This includes sections on the Rule of Law as a UN Project: A Selection of UN Documents on the Rule of Law, the Interaction between the International and Domestic Rule(s) of Law, and the (International) Rule of Law: A Tool of Hegemony?.

Experts without borders

This chapter presents liberal varieties of technocratic internationalism from the interwar years. The first section sketches the tumultuous situation at the end of the First World War to set the stage for this discussion. Wartime cooperation among the Western allies became a point of reference for internationalism of the executive top-down type. The work of two British internationalists, James Arthur Salter and H. R. G. Greaves, illustrates this type of internationalism, and is the focus of the second section. These authors envisaged the economic and technical branches of the League as a continuation of the wartime ‘executives’ among the Western allies. The American Pitman B. Potter linked his vision of international expert administration to otherwise Wilsonian ideas about an international rule of law and the primacy of security. The third section is devoted to the more utopian kinds of technocratic internationalism of the interwar years. They are represented here by Leonard Woolf and G. D. H. Cole who applied ideas of functional government to the domestic and international level alike. The final section of the chapter turns to David Mitrany who developed the functional approach to international organization more systematically. It shows how Mitrany combined the pragmatic and utopian elements of technocratic internationalism into a new synthesis.

Part VI Actors, Ch.38 Non-State Actors

This chapter describes non-state actors (NSAs), which encompass a range of entities that collectively extend international environmental law beyond traditional state authority in numerous regimes. Characterized by considerable breadth and diversity, NSAs exist within the traditional, state-centric treaty architecture while simultaneously contesting its structure. Because diverse institutional actors can satisfy the definition of ‘non-state actor’, the chapter analyses a subset of NSAs: non-governmental organizations (NGOs). It first defines NGOs, identifying some common characteristics that influence their ability to advance international environmental law, and noting fundamental criteria used to distinguish among NGOs. The chapter then discusses three key functions that NGOs perform in contemporary international environmental law: serving as activists engaged in agenda-setting functions; performing diplomacy to shape and facilitate international rule-making processes; and contributing to rule-making, implementation, and enforcement in contemporary global governance. It concludes by forecasting strong continued NGO participation in developing non-treaty international environmental law.