The book analyses the administrative system in the European Union with a focus on the efficiency and legitimacy of the administrative practices. In the analysis three distinct theoretical perspectives are used (a structural, a procedural and a cultural), thus ensuring that a broad variety of factors are included.

Internationally operating nongovernmental organisations, NGOs, are increasingly involved in international politics and policy making. In many respects their involvement resembles activities and policies that, until recently, were typical of traditional national authorities. This book is about the reasons for which NGOs can and the reasons for which NGOs cannot be considered as rightful participants in international governance. It tries to deliver rationally defensible starting points for the discussion and the assessment of claims for the legitimacy of their organizations and activities. The...

The contributions collected in the present book go beyond refugee law in its traditional sense - largely centred on questions of durable asylum and the plight of only a small tranche of the asylum-seeking population - in situating refugee law within the broader international legal system. The refugee problem is thus seen as a prism through which a host of exploding issues confront traditional international law and international relations: creation and dissolution of states, state responsibility, human rights, international jurisdiction and the United Nations mandate. These theoretical...

This study is a description and analysis of the work of the African Commission on human and peoples' rights. Its aim is to make the African Commission accessible, and it therefore emphasizes the practical rather than the theoretical aspects of the work of the Commission. Readers should gain insight into the structure and mandate of the Commission, the procedures for examining complaints, and the State reporting procedure. A significant portion of the book addresses how the African Commission has dealt with actual cases alleging violation of the rights and freedoms guaranteed by the Charter....

This book analyzes the law-creating process relating to the interpretation of constituent instruments of international organizations. This topic is one of the key issues concerning the structures and activities of international organizations. It differs from other books in the field by suggesting that, under the influences of the inherent dynamism of international organizations, the interpretative framework of their constituent instruments is not the same as that of ordinary treaties. It also concludes that the interpretation of the constituent instruments of international organizations...

This study tackles a controversial topic in international law and contemporary international relations, namely, the legality of intervention by a major power against weaker states within the same geographic region. Specifically, the author examines the practice of United States intervention in the Western Hemisphere, with particular emphasis on the relationship between the United States and its Latin American and Caribbean neighbours.
The work highlights six cases of U.S. intervention-Guatemala in 1954, Cuba in 1961, the Dominican Republic in 1965, Grenada in 1983, Nicaragua in 1985, and...

Many different, and even opposite, meanings are ascribed to the term sources' of international law. The author of this work goes back to the meaning of the term source' in general (spring or well) and analyses in detail the various sources of international law.
He first explains the sources of general, and then those of particular international law. He starts with general principles of law, which is followed by common features of customary process of whatsoever kind, and then by general and by particular customary law. Custom will be followed by unilateral acts of States and with...

A comparative analysis of the legislation in the field of bioethics in several Western countries, especially in European Union member states, shows that there is a profound difference both in legislative policies and in the ethical principles enshrined by the laws. Over the past few years bioethics, as a discipline, has attempted to elaborate individual and collective behavioural codes in several fields, but it has come up against enormous difficulties; it has not even been possible to reach a consensus between different countries on the general principles. An example of this is the recent...

The Markland Group is a Canadian non-governmental organization founded in 1987 by Douglas Scott. It is composed of lawyers, academics and other professionals with a special interest in the compliance aspects of disarmament treaties. The Canadian Council on International Law was founded in 1972 to represent Canadian international law practitioners and academics and to facilitate and promote the study of international legal problems by scholars and professionals. These two organizations joined forces in March 1995 to conduct a workshop on compliance, a topic which they felt had received...