Headline »

8th Edition of Bell, McGillivray and Pedersen Environmental Law Published

2013/05/13 – 10:21 pm |

The 8th edition of Bell, McGillivray and Pedersen Environmental Law has now been published by Oxford University Press. The new edition includes coverage of, among other things, the EU Industrial Emissions Directive 2010 and the UK Climate Change Act 2008, discussion of the Localism Act 2011 and its impact on planning, enhanced coverage of environmental rights, including under the Aarhus Convention and coverage of important …

Read the full story »
Public International Law

Commentary and reports on international law related subjects

EU/EC Law

Commentary and reports in the field of EU- and EC-law

Guest Blogging

Collection of contributions from guest authors

Publications

Learn about the latest publications in international law

Scholarship

Read the latest posts related to scholarship and academia

Constitutional Law, Human Rights, Indigenous People »

The Story of Amparo Laws in Mexico

2013/05/22 – 9:34 am |
We are happy to publish this reflection on amparo laws in Mexico, written by Rebecca Ellis, freelance journalist covering immigration, labor and business issues.
   The sun may be rising on Mexico’s legal landscape, brightening this country’s prospects for human rights. This ray of hope shines as a beacon in the shadows of this last decade.
     According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, 28 journalists have been killed or disappeared since 2006. Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission has issued reports of nearly 90 cases since 2007 of army soldiers having committed serious human rights abuses. The United Nations report that over 80 percent of indigenous families live in poverty. But change is visible on the horizon.
     The expansion of Mexico’s amparo laws and the options they provide for individuals and groups to file constitutional claims may help improve Mexico’s mottled human rights record. Recent proposed changes to the legal framework for constitutional injunctions in Mexico may help improve civil rights protections for all segments of society, from journalists to indigenous villagers and farmers.
     “The reform has opened a lot of new possibilities in protecting and enforcing constitutional law,” said Mr. Alejandro Mora, a litigation lawyer from Calderón González y Carvajal, SC. He noted that the expansion of amparo in Mexico will strengthen already-existing human rights protections, as well as put Mexico more in line with the international human rights treaties it has signed.
     In the Mexican legal system, amparo laws are used by claimants to file injunctions based on constitutional rights. The laws seek to protect claimants from abuse of authority and to defend basic civil rights granted in the first 29 articles of the Mexican Constitution. The expansion of the amparo laws will also extend the terms of judicial proceedings as well as the effects of amparo rulings.
     Mr. Edgar Cortez, Coordinator of Citizen Security and Justice for human rights non-profit Insituto Mexicano de Derechos Humanos, agrees that an amparo expansion provides a positive outlook for improving human rights protections in Mexico, indigenous communities and neighbors in filing environmental or claims in Mexican courts.
     Aside from strengthening direct human rights protections, a second key element of the changes to the amparo laws will be the extension of the effects of amparo rulings. Now, constitutional judgments could affect norms that do not just apply to the claimants in a particular case, but to other parties not involved in the suit as well, and could ultimately lead to an eventual appeal or removal of the disputed laws from the legal system if they are deemed unconstitutional. For instance, amparo rulings could be applicable in the event of collective claims made by journalists, according to Mora.
“If a journalist files an amparo claim that his or her constitutional rights of access to information have been violated, a ruling in the journalist’s favor will now benefit all journalists,” he pointed out.
     A third element of the amparo expansion relates to the actual claimants in amparo proceedings. “Collective or legitimate interest” has been added to “judicial or legal interest” in determining the legitimacy of a claimant in amparo suits. Previously, a claimant had to strictly prove “legal or judicial interest” in a matter before being able to participate in an amparo claim by obtaining an official government action (acto de autoridad). Now, any party with a legitimate interest (individual or collective) can join an amparo suit.
“Now it is sufficient to prove you have a group or collective interest in the matter,” Cortez explained. “It promotes diffuse and collective rights.”
   Cortez also cited an example of how such amparo rulings could affect indigenous communities filing environmental claims based on collective constitutional rights.
“If an indigenous community wants to file a claim against authorities for putting a highway through their community, they can now claim that the whole community will be affected, not just those whose houses would be in the path of the slated construction,” he said.
     Finally, the expansion of the amparo laws could lay the groundwork for establishing a previously uncommon legal concept in Mexico: the right to consultation. This could particularly be beneficial for collective or environmental claims filed by marginalized communities in Mexico, whose first language may not be Spanish, according to Cortez.
“Now, these communities wouldn’t just have to trust in the Spanish-speaking delegate they send to meet with government officials, but could have the time they need to deliberate the matter themselves beforehand,” Cortez explained.
     Legislators are still in the process of enacting a new amparo law regulating articles 103 and 107 of the Mexican Constitution to coincide with a broader set of constitutional reforms begun in
2011. The amparo reform was signed into law on April 2, 2013.
Compartelo:


NATO Gender Mainstreaming and the Feminist Critique of the Law of Armed Conflict

2013/05/15 – 11:28 am |

We have the pleasure to host on our blog a post by our colleague, Jody M. Prescott, Senior Fellow, West Point Center for the Rule of Law, and adjunct professor, Department of Political Science, University of Vermont. For those interested the full article is available at Georgetown Journal of Gender and the Law, Volume XIV, Issue 1, Winter 2013, pp. 83-133.

 “Will NATO gender mainstreaming efforts  accomplish greater …

The Legitimacy and Effectiveness of International Criminal Tribunals Conference

2013/05/06 – 11:05 am | One Comment

PluriCourts, University of Oslo, August 30-31 2014
Call for Papers
The establishment of International Criminal Tribunals (including the ICTY, ICTR, and the ICC), and hybrid or internationalized tribunals (including the SCSL, ECCC, East Timor and Kosovo Panels and others) has been hailed as a great achievement within international law.  They are characterized as institutions which promoted peace and reconciliation by seeking to prevent and deter war crimes, …

Backtracking on Responsibility: French Court Absolves Veolia for Unlawful Railway Construction in Occupied Territory

2013/05/01 – 7:04 pm |

This post was originally published on Dr. Nadia Bernaz’s Business and Human Rights blog, Rights as Usual.
—–
On 22 March 2013 (a decision that became public more recently), the Versailles Court of Appeal dismissed the case against two French companies, Alstom and Veolia, for their involvement in a contract for the construction of a light railway between illegal Israeli settlements located in East Jerusalem, inside the Palestinian territory …

The US Supreme Court Decides Kiobel: Denies Extraterritoriality for the ATS

2013/04/18 – 12:13 am |

On 17 April 2013 the US Supreme Court decided the case KIOBEL, INDIVIDUALLY AND ON BEHALF OF HER LATE HUSBAND KIOBEL, ET AL. v. ROYAL DUTCH PETROLEUM CO. ET AL. The full text of the decision is available here.

Petitioners, Nigerian nationals residing in the United States, filed suit in federal court under the Alien Tort Statute, alleging that respondents—certain Dutch, British, and Nigerian corporations—aided and  …

iCourts Summer School, International Law: Courts and Contexts, 24-28 June 2013

2013/04/10 – 1:51 pm |

The Centre of Excellence for International Courts (iCourts) is hosting a high-level summer school for PhD students and junior scholars working on international law and with a special interest in interdisciplinary studies of international law and its social and political context.
We particularly welcome students and scholars who are writing up a PhD thesis or a post-doc project that involves a study of one or more …

Professor Jane McAdam: Disappearing States

2013/04/07 – 9:45 pm |

With the kind permission of OUP, please find in the following an interesting post on disappearing States by Professor Jane McAdam, Scientia Professor of Law at the University of New South Wales, Australia and a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. She is the author of Climate Change, Forced Migration, and International Law.
The article (originally posted on the OUPblog) was written …

Update on the African Court of Human Rights

2013/04/07 – 7:36 pm |

The African Court of Human Rights, which has its seat in Arusha (Tanzania), delivered one Judgment and issued 2 Orders for provisional measures on 15 March 2013. The Judgment was in respect of Application 014/2001: Atabong Denis Atemnkeng v. The African Union.

The matter in Application 014/2001: Atabong Denis Atemnkeng v. The African Union concerns the validity of Article 34 (6) of the Protocol to the African Charter on …

Some updates from the ICC

2013/03/12 – 11:28 am |

New ICC Deputy-Prosecutor and Registrar 
On 8 March Mr James Stewart of Canada was sworn in as Deputy Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) during a ceremony held in an open session of the Court.  ICC President Judge Sang-Hyun Song presided over the session and the President of the Assembly of States Parties (ASP), Ambassador Tiina Intelmann served as witness to the solemn undertaking. For more …

PhD’s National Education Index

2013/02/24 – 5:23 pm |

The Education Index is the only college database of its kind on the web. Using consistent, updated data from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), the index allows students to search for and rank college programs in the U.S. using special filters. The data spans both undergraduate and graduate institutions at all degree levels.
The database also allows students to sort schools by things like …

Socio Legal Review Essay Competition 2013

2013/02/18 – 10:22 am |

Socio-Legal Review Essay Competition Poster 2013
The Socio-Legal Review, with Khaitan and Co. and Sterling Developers, announces the 3rd Annual Essay Competition 2012-13, as part of its initiative to encourage writing on issues of contemporary relevance among students in South Asia.
The topics for this year’s competition are:
a. Legislating on Land Acquisition: A Possible Consensual Model?
b. Extending Social Security to Developing Countries
c. The Viability of Supra-State Entities: The …

Public International Law Quiz

2013/02/17 – 6:05 pm |

I do recommend to our readers this funny quiz on international law provided by OUP: Public International Law Quiz

Compartelo:

Quick update on the International Court of Justice

2013/02/13 – 11:25 am |

Conference on the Compulsory Jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice
Judge Peter Tomka, President of the ICJ, gave an opening statement at a conference on the Compulsory Jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice held in Bucharest, Romania, on 4 February 2013. The full text of his speech is available here. Among others he noted that,
 At present, 69 States out of 193 Member States of …

BUSINESS AND HUMAN RIGHTS: OBLIGATIONS, CHALLENGES AND IMPLEMENTATION

2013/02/07 – 2:32 pm |

The Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences in Vietnam together with the Vietnam Programme at the Norwegian Centre for Human Right, University of Oslo, call for papers to an international conference on business and human rights to be held in Hanoi, Vietnam, on 27-28 June 2013. The Conference is inter-disciplinary and aimed at bringing together scholars and practitioners with an interest in the area.
The huge economic …

The Law of International Responsibility

2013/02/04 – 7:20 pm |

The Law of International Responsibility, Edited by James Crawford, Alain Pellet and Simon Olleson, (Oxford University Press, 2010) ISBN13: 9780199296972, ISBN10: 0199296979, Hardback, 1376 pages.
The book review of this volume is long overdue. That said, I have had the possibility to make ample use of this book in my scholarly work over the last two years. Despite international law’s breadth and depth, it is difficult to find a topic which …

International Law in a Multipolar World, American Society of International Law, 107th Annual Meeting, Washington D.C. April 3 – 6, 2013

2013/01/19 – 6:49 am |

Early Bird Discounts End January 31, 2013 – Click here for full details and to register.
With over a century of tradition and experience behind it, the American Society of International Law’s Annual Meeting has become the most important gathering in the field of international law.
More than 1,200 practitioners, academics, and students travel to Washington, DC, each spring from all over the world to debate …

The Rule of Law: The Security Council and Accountability: Cross-Cutting Report

2013/01/19 – 6:39 am |

Executive Summary
This is Security Council Report’s second Cross-Cutting Report on the Rule of Law. The entire report can be downloaded in PDF.
Even before the rule of law has become integral to the peacekeeping and peacebuilding efforts of the Security Council, the issue of accountability for serious human rights violations and international crimes has appeared regularly in the rhetoric of the Council. Transitioning from discourse to …

Obstacles of Citizenship – call for abstracts

2013/01/10 – 11:23 am |

The European Consortium of Political Research will hold its 2013 General Conference in Bordeaux, France.

One panel is “OBSTACLES OF CITIZENSHIP”

This panel explores why individuals decide not to participate in politics broadly conceived. It asks why citizens find it difficult to or choose not to become involved in a variety of citizenship practices, including (but not limited to) voting, joining political parties, unions and non-governmental organizations, …

Methodological Challenges in Human Rights Research – research training course

2012/12/20 – 1:49 pm |

The Norwegian Centre for Human Rights (University of Oslo) is organizing a research training course in cooperation with the European University Institute and Åbo Akademi, under the umbrella of the Nordic Network in Human Rights Research. This event will take place at the European University Institute in Florence (Italy), on 10-14 June 2013. This course is part of the NordForsk-funded Nordic Network’s current project on “Methodological …