"In the past 40 years these various procedures and outputs of the United Nations Human Rights Treaty System (UNHRTS) have gradually become sophisticated, developed and strengthened. It has made contributions to the promotion and protection of human rights. Despite its achievements, however, it also faces serious challenges and weaknesses, which induces some insider commentators to evaluate it as 'a system in crisis' and to criticise the whole system as one that urgently needs 'a complete overhaul'. From time to time, several proposals were made to improve the situation. However, the underlying problems persisted. Thus further and radical calls for re-organisation of the monitoring mechanism of the UNHRTS into a Unified and Standing Treaty Monitoring Body (USTMB) was made very recently. A further call for consolidation was made more explicit subsequently. In March 2006 the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCHR) has issued a Concept Paper proposing to consolidate the current treaty monitoring bodies (TMBs) into a USTMB in an attempt to address the persistent problems the UNHTRS monitoring mechanism has been facing. A proposal regarded as too radical by many insiders of the UNHRTS. In view of the serious weaknesses of the UNHRTS monitoring mechanism, the initiated reform is a positive step. However, in seeking to introduce reform, and particularly within the UNHRTS, great caution is important not to throw the baby with water in the reform process. There is real concern about squandering, in the name of reform, the progress achieved over the last decades. In order to introduce an effective reform, it is important to be aware of [what] has worked and what has not, and make strategic choices based on these insights. In view of the proposed USTMB as a solution to the weakness of the system, balancing the reform initiative so that it will inherit the positive legacies while redressing the weakness is, therefore, a major contemporary concern." -- Introduction. / Thesis (LLM (Human Rights and Democratisation in Africa)) -- University of Pretoria, 2006. / Prepared under the supervision of Mr. E.Y. Benneh at the Faculty of Law, University of Ghana, Accra, Ghana / http://www.chr.up.ac.za/academic_pro/llm1/dissertations.html / Centre for Human Rights / LLM

This thesis focuses on the contest that can be defined as an epoch in Irish political discourse, the Treaty of Lisbon referendum 2008. It approaches the subject from an alternative angle to current research, which predominately focuses on the outcome of the referendum rather than the causes of the outcome. Principally, this research offers a critical discourse analysis of the preliminary debate covering the sessions of Dáil Éireann from the begin of the debate on 3rd April 2008 to the final statements on the 23rd April 2008 which debated the controversial government backed Treaty of Lisbon. This thesis wishes to trace the ways in which opposition actors attempted to resonate their arguments with chronicled master frameworks of Irish foreign policy a tactic which has emerged as a key ideological resource, and to the extent they utilised neutrality as a persuasive tool in influencing the outcome of the debate.

As the field of investment treaty arbitration has exponentially grown in the last years, the definition and the framework of key elements in the field, such as legitimate expectations, have been largely discussed by scholars and arbitrators. As jurisprudence has gone on to tackle such issue, it has been the appearance of concepts, such as due diligence, which have shaped and re-defined the standing of legitimate expectations in the field of investment treaty arbitration.

Over the last decade, investment treaty arbitration has been confronted with relatively extensive and fundamental criticisms. The problem with the system in fact boils down to a misconception by tribunals of the nature of investment treaty arbitration. Many scholars and tribunals have perceived and treated investment treaty arbitration as a reciprocal arrangement with a private function. This is so mainly because of the way they formulate the establishment of investment treaty arbitration. To put it simply, it has been though that investment treaty arbitration, similar to international commercial arbitration, is founded upon a reciprocal contract made through a merger of intentions of the host State and the foreign investor. This perception would necessarily lead to the application of the principle of party autonomy as the main governing principle over the process of arbitration; a principle that is well tailored to adjudications with private function. Contrary to this, a careful examination of the nature of investment treaty arbitration reveals not only the public dimensions of the system, but also the unilaterality of the framework on which the system stands. These two characteristics require a shift in paradigm; otherwise, the system will expose to more and more legitimacy crises. The present research, therefore, tends to make a clear distinction between the two systems of international commercial and investment treaty arbitration, and explore the implications of this paradigm-shifting for the process of investment treaty arbitration, in particular, the way tribunals interpret the instrument of consent and the autonomy of tribunals in the course of the arbitration.

This dissertation is shaped by a concern with how the doctrine of Aboriginal and treaty rights in Canada can develop to meaningfully recognize Indigenous self-determination. A number of inherited concepts (e.g. law, sovereignty, state, jurisdiction, and territory) have constrained legal and political imaginations and supported a legal apparatus that confines Indigenous peoples to a subordinate place in the constitutional order. Drawing on scholarship on common law Aboriginal rights, legal pluralism, legal geography, legal history, and political theory, this work develops a novel legal and theoretical critique by historicizing the concepts courts have relied on in mediating Crown-Indigenous relations and demonstrating that the retrospective application of these concepts, which supports the subordination of Indigenous peoples in the present day, is empirically suspect. Using Canada’s Maritime provinces as an example, this is accomplished by describing in detail the legal pluralism that characterized the 17th and 18th centuries in the region, particularly how social and legal spaces were constituted by a plurality of legal and normative orders. By analyzing the territorial reach and subject matters of eight distinct legal systems that were operative in the region during this period, this work demonstrates that absolute jurisdiction through fixed territorial boundaries has never been an accurate way to describe Crown, or later state, authority in the region. Rather, the region’s legal spaces were constituted by a plurality of overlapping, entangled, and hybrid legalities that structured territorial jurisdiction in discrete and unique ways. This challenges Aboriginal rights doctrine that too often relies on unstated presuppositions about the effect of Crown assertions of sovereignty in retroactively applying conceptions of territorial jurisdiction that are tailored to meet the requirements of the contemporary nation-state and have the effect of minimizing Indigenous claims and supporting the unilateral authority of the state. The final chapter applies this legal-historical analysis to the present-day through an analysis of recent treaty fishing rights disputes in Mi’kma’ki/Nova Scotia. / Graduate

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The World Trade Organization’s agreements contain a national security exception, that allows WTO members to circumvent their international trade obligations under the organization if they find it necessary to protect their essential security interests. The exception embodies the complex and difficultly navigated line between national security and free trade. National sovereignty is a matter that is widely considered to go beyond the interests of trade, a notion from which the need of a security exception spawns, while circumvention of the WTO obligations for any other reason than honest and real intent to uphold security clearly undermines the system.  To date, two WTO panels have interpreted a subparagraph of the national security exception, namely the case where a member may adopt measures they find necessary for the protection of their essential security interests in times of war or other emergency in international relations. To satisfy the requirements under this provision, a member must adhere to the principle of good faith by articulating its essential security interest, and elucidate the link between these interests and the trade restrictive measures adopted. However, the panels failed to properly scrutinize the existence of good faith. Instead, fulfillment of these requirements was determined by how close the emergency in international relation lied to the hard core of armed conflict. In this essay, it is argued that the failure to properly review good faith leaves a legal loophole that enables abuse of the exception for purely economic reasons. Previously, the atmosphere of the trading system allowed security and economic matters to more easily be kept apart. However, recent developments of national trade policies and the rise of new economic powers have changed the balance of the geoeconomic order.  Because uncodified powers no longer efficiently suppress security disputes from entering the WTO, this essay concludes that the security exception might have to be clarified to prevent abuse. Considering the changes to the trading regime’s state of play, the main discussion held is on whether an evolutionary interpretation of the term “emergency in international relations” could help remedy the loophole in the national security exception. As the multilateral trading system is facing challenges much different from the post-war environment in which the exception was drafted, the security exception must be interpreted in a dynamic manner to ensure compliance with the intention of its drafting parties.

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of Content and Conclusions of Dissertation Constitution for Europe JUDr. Jiří Feichtinger The central subject-matter of the dissertation is the assessment of the Treaty establishing the Constitution for Europe ("constitutional treaty") and the co called founding treaties, i.e. the Treaty on European Union and the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union ("founding treaties") from the viewpoint of the constitutional law and the general theory of state. From the same viewpoints I also examine the nature of the European Union itself. When choosing this topic of my dissertation I was inspired by ever growing discussions on the extent of the European integration and its purpose, whether it is at all necessary, and whether the European Union is becoming a state or rather remains an international organization sui generis. I am trying to answer, to what extent the content of the constitutional treaty corresponded to its name and whether this document could at all be called a constitution; the same question is being answered with regards to the founding treaties. I further examine, whether the constitutional and/or the founding treaties lead to the united Europe as perceived not only within the notion of the European integration, but also by the general theory of state, i.e. whether these treaties...