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17341. Geopolitics and Russian foreign policy

Author:
John Berryman
Publication Date:
07-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Politics
Institution:
Palgrave Macmillan
Abstract:
The article provides a broad overview of the fluctuating connections between the controversial and ambiguous field of modern geopolitics and Russia. Given the pivotal significance of the Russian challenge within the early hypotheses of Mahan and Mackinder, the article first explores those distinctive geographical and spatial considerations that helped shape the development of the Russian Empire. The place of geopolitics in the Cold War is then reviewed, including both its policy orientation and the exchanges between the proponents of geopolitical realism and liberal internationalism. In conclusion, the article examines the post-Cold War renaissance of geopolitics, reviewing both theoretical developments and policy implications for Russian foreign policy.
Topic:
Foreign Policy and Politics
Political Geography:
Russia

17342. Is the European Convention Going to Be 'Supreme'? A Comparative-Constitutional Overview of ECHR and EU Law before National Courts

Author:
Giuseppe Martinico
Publication Date:
05-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Abstract:
The aim of this article is to answer the question, 'are national judges extending the structural EU law principles (primacy and direct effect) to the European Convention on Human Rights'? This article does not intend to examine the broader issue of the rapprochement between the legal systems of the EU and the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) but it concentrates on how national judges treat the norms of the ECHR compared with their treatment of EU law. I have structured this article in three parts. The first part offers a first look at the 'constitutional variety' existing in terms of constitutional provisions devoted to the impact of the ECHR and EU laws on the national systems. In the second part I will move to analyse the relevant case law of the domestic judges on three factors of potential convergence: consistent interpretation, disapplication of national law conflicting with European provisions, and emergence of a counter-limits doctrine. Finally, in the third part I will offer some concluding remarks on the convergence issue.
Political Geography:
Europe

17343. Sustainable Development in International Law: Nature and Operation of an Evolutive Legal Norm

Author:
Virginie Barral
Publication Date:
05-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Abstract:
The wide dissemination of sustainable development in international law has generated considerable academic interest. However, because of the evasive and flexible content of what has been termed by the ICJ a concept in the Gabcˇíkovo-Nagymaros case, and more recently an objective in the Pulp Mills case, academic commentary has often struggled to ascertain sustainable development's legal nature, which has proved a notion defying legal classification. One attractive thesis has been Lowe's analysis of sustainable development as an interstitial or modifying norm which exerts its normative influence as an interpretative tool in the hands of judges. Its interpretative function is certainly very significant. Judicial bodies have used it to legitimize recourse to evolutive treaty interpretation, as a rule of conflict resolution, and even to redefine conventional obligations. However, beyond this convenient hermeneutical function, by laying down an objective to strive for in hundreds of treaties, sustainable development primarily purports to regulate state conduct. As an objective, it lays down not an absolute but a relative obligation to achieve sustainable development. Such obligations are known as obligations of means or of best efforts. Legal subjects are thus ultimately under an obligation to promote sustainable development.

17344. Transnational Holocaust Litigation

Author:
Leora Bilsky
Publication Date:
05-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Abstract:
International adjudication of the Holocaust has played a defining role in the development of international criminal law. Its legacy has recently been challenged by the Holocaust restitution actions brought before American courts in the 1990s. Settled for unprecedented amounts, the litigation has been sharply criticized by legal scholars and historians, who raise doubts as to the justice achieved for victims, and criticize the representation of the Holocaust in the actions. This article assesses the contribution of civil proceedings to conceptions of justice in international law. First, contrary to the critics, it argues that the civil class action provides an appropriate legal tool to deal with the liability of bureaucratic institutions for participation in gross human rights violations. Secondly, this article argues that the restitution actions altered the relationship between law and the history of the Holocaust as shaped under the paradigm of criminal law. Precisely because it was structured as a civil action and was settled, the litigation made a substantial contribution to historical research on the relationship between the state, corporations, and civil society in the carrying out of mass crimes. Thus, in opposition to the prevailing view that criminal law is the privileged form of law for dealing with atrocity, this article uncovers the valuable contribution of this new model of litigation to international law.
Political Geography:
America

17345. Peer Review in Crisis; From the Editor's Mail Box: The Perils of Publishing – Living under a False Title; The European Law Institute In this Issue

Publication Date:
05-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Abstract:
EJIL and its sister publication, I-CON are peer-reviewed journals. This is a counter-cultural posture in an age which celebrates, for some very good reasons (and some less admirable), the freedom that self-publication on the internet provides. Our own very successful Blog, EJILTalk!, is an example of a highly interesting and useful form of self-publication and I-CONnect will be launched soon. There are surely others like ours. SSRN is a more ambiguous example, but even there, there are some diamonds in the rough, if you have the patience to do some heavy-duty prospecting and sifting. Be that as it may, SSRN is not just part of contemporary academic culture; it is a defining part, both reflective and constitutive.
Political Geography:
Europe

17346. The European Lesson for International Democracy: The Significance of Articles 9 to 12 EU Treaty for International Organizations

Author:
Armin von Bogdandy
Publication Date:
05-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Abstract:
This article argues that Articles 9–12 of the EU Treaty provide a promising way to conceptualize and develop the democratic legitimation of international organizations. To be sure, the current European Union is not a democratic showcase. However, an innovative concept of democracy, neither utopian nor apologetic, has found its way into its founding treaty. It can point the way in conceiving and developing the democratic credentials not just of the EU, but of public authority beyond the state in general. Since comparison is a main avenue to insight, this article will present those Articles and show what lessons can be learnt for international organizations.
Political Geography:
Europe

17347. The Crisis of the European Union in the Light of a Constitutionalization of International Law

Author:
Jürgen Habermas
Publication Date:
05-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Abstract:
The crisis of the European Union showcases the asymmetry between transnational capacities for political action and social as well as economic forces unleashed at the transnational level. But recovering the regulatory power of politics by way of increased supranational organization frequently arouses fears about the fate of national democracy and about the democratic sovereign, threatened to be dispossessed by executive powers operating independently at the global level. Against such political defeatism this contribution uses the example of the European Union to refute the underlying claim that a transnationalization of popular sovereignty cannot be achieved without lowering the level of democratic legitimation. It focuses on three components of every democratic polity – the association of free and equal legal persons, a bureaucratic organization for collective action, and civic solidarity as a medium of political integration – to argue that the new configuration they take at the European level does not in principle diminish the democratic legitimacy of the new transnational polity. The contribution continues to argue, however, that the sharing of sovereignty between the peoples and citizens of Europe needs to be better reflected in a symmetrical relationship between Council and Parliament while political leadership and the media must contribute to a greater sense of civil solidarity.
Political Geography:
Europe

17348. Roaming Charges Places of Entry: Tel Aviv Airport

Publication Date:
05-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Abstract:
We deal in EJIL with the world we live in – often with its worst and most violent pathologies, often with its most promising signs of hope for a better world. But, inevitably, since our vehicle is scholarship, we reify this world. Roaming Charges is designed not just to offer a moment of aesthetic relief, but to remind us of the ultimate subject of our scholarly reflections: we alternate between photos of places – the world we live in – and photos of people – who we are, the human condition. We eschew the direct programmatic photograph: people shot up; the ravages of pollution and all other manner of photojournalism.

17349. The WTO Legality of the Application of the EU's Emission Trading System to Aviation

Author:
Lorand Bartels
Publication Date:
05-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Abstract:
The aviation industry has been included in the EU's emissions trading scheme (ETS) since 1 January 2012. Airlines now have to acquire and 'surrender' allowances for the carbon emissions produced by their flights. The scheme is comprehensive: it applies to EU and non- EU airlines (subject to a potential exemption), to passenger and cargo flights, and to flights between EU airports and between EU and non-EU airports. An airline that fails to surrender allowances is fined 100 per allowance and must make up the shortfall the following year. The EU's scheme has already given rise to legal action in connection with the EU's international civil aviation obligations. But, due to its impacts on trade in goods and services, the scheme also has implications for the EU's obligations under WTO law: specifically, under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS). Some of these issues are specific to this scheme, but in other respects they are connected with the current debate on the WTO legality of border carbon adjustments (BCAs). As this article shows, it is challenging to design a carbon scheme that is both administratively feasible and justifiable under WTO law.

17350. EU Climate Change Unilateralism

Author:
Joanne Scott and Lavanya Rajamani
Publication Date:
05-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Abstract:
The EU is engaged in an ambitious, controversial, and high-stakes experiment to extend the reach of its climate change law. It is seeking to use its market power to stimulate climate action, and to substitute for climate inaction, elsewhere. This is most apparent in relation to the EU's decision to include aviation in its emissions trading scheme. While we are sympathetic to the EU's objectives, and do not take issue with its unilateral means, we argue that the EU is not giving adequate weight to the principle of Common but Differentiated Responsibilities and Respective Capabilities (CBDRRC). While the status, meaning, and implications of this principle are contested and unclear, it requires that developed countries should take the lead in addressing the causes and effects of climate change. We argue that the concept of CBDRRC retains relevance in the context of unilateral climate action, and that the EU's Aviation Directive should be interpreted, applied, and where necessary adjusted in the light of it. We put forward two concrete proposals to achieve this end.