INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

What is INTERNATIONAL LAW?

International law is a body of legal rules, regulations and accepted practices by which countries, organizations and people throughout the world interact with each other and with citizens of different countries. There are two basic categories of this type of law: public and private. Public international law deals with relationships between nations or between a nation and organizations or people from other countries. Private international law deals with disputes between citizens of different countries or businesses from different countries, especially when there is a question of which country's laws apply or where the dispute should be resolved. There are certain courts and bodies, such as the United Nations Security Council, that have the power to decide cases of international law.

 What are the sources of INTERNATIONAL LAW?

Sources of International Laws 

a) International conventions, whether general or particular;

b) International custom, as evidence of general practice accepted as law;

c) The general principles of law recognised by civilised nations;

d) Subsidiary means for the determination of rules of law such as judicial decisions and teachings of the most highly qualified publicists.

These sources will be analysed below.

A. International conventions

International treaties are contracts signed between states. They are legally binding and impose mutual obligations on the states that are party to any particular treaty (states parties). The main particularity of human rights treaties is that they impose obligations on states about the manner in which they treat all individuals within their jurisdiction. 

Even though the sources of international law are not hierarchical, treaties have some degree of primacy. More than forty major international conventions for the protection of human rights have been adopted. International human rights treaties bear various titles, including ‘covenant’, ‘convention’ and ‘protocol’; but what they share are the explicit indication of states parties to be bound by their terms. 

B. International custom 

Customary international law plays a crucial role in international human rights law. The Statute of the International Court of Justice refers to ‘general practice accepted as law’. In order to become international customary law, the ‘general practice’ needs to represent a broad consensus in terms of content and applicability, deriving from a sense that the practice is obligatory (opinio juris et necessitatis). Customary law is binding on all states (except those that may have objected to it during its formation), whether or not they have ratified any relevant treaty.  

One of the important features of customary international law is that customary law may, under certain circumstances, lead to universal jurisdiction or application, so that any national court may hear extra-territorial claims brought under international law. In addition, there also exists a class of customary international law, jus cogens, or peremptory norms of general international law, which are norms accepted and recognised by the international community of states as a whole as norms from which noderogation is permitted. Under the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (VCLT) any treaty which conflicts with a peremptory norm is void. 

C. General principles of law 

In the application of both national and international law, general or guiding principles are used. In international law they have been defined as ‘logical propositions resulting from judicial reasoning on the basis of existing pieces of international law’.

At the international level, general principles of law occupy an important place in case-law regarding human rights. A clear example is the principle of proportionality, which is important for human rights supervisory mechanisms in assessing whether interference with a human right may be justified. Why are general principles used? No legislation is able to provide answers to every question and to every possible situation that arises. Therefore, rules of law or principles that enable decision-makers and members of the executive and judicial branches to decide on the issues before them are needed. General principles of law play two important roles: on the one hand, they provide guidelines for judges, in particular, in deciding in individual cases; on the other hand, they limit the discretionary power of judges and of members of the executive in their decisions in individual cases.

D. Subsidiary means for the determination of rules of law 

According to Article 38 of the Statute of the International Court of Justice, judicial decisions and the teachings of the most qualified publicists are ‘subsidiary means for the determination of rules of law’. Therefore, they are not, strictly speaking, formal sources, but they are regarded as evidence of the state of the law. 

As for the judicial decisions, Article 38 of the Statute of the International Court of Justice is not confined to international decisions (such as the judgements of the International Court of Justice, the Inter-American Court, the European Court and the future African Court on Justice and Human Rights); decisions of national tribunals relating to human rights are also subsidiary sources of law. 

The writings of scholars contribute to the development and analysis of human rights law. Compared to the formal standard setting of international organs the impact is indirect. Nevertheless, influential contributions have been made by scholars and experts working in human rights fora, for instance, in the UN Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights, as well as by highly regarded NGOs, such as Amnesty International and the International Commission of Jurists.

What are the different schools of thought on INTERNATIONAL LAW?

There are at least three commonly acknowledged "schools" or approaches to treaty interpretation, which correspond to methods of construction of any legal text—including constitutions, statutes, and contracts. 

Textualist. The first school is textualism. All solid treaty interpretation begins with the words of a provision itself, as they are commonly understood. VCLT Article 31, in discussing treaty interpretation, calls for an examination of a text’s "ordinary meaning." Many treaties are drafted in two or more languages, and it is vital to ascertain not only which languages are "authentic," but also that there may be different shades of meanings of terms in different languages.

Intentionalist. Textualism can be a form of contextual reading of different provisions in a treaty text, in order to reach a sensible result. Already one can see a tension between the text of a treaty provision and the intent of the drafters. However, the second, intentionalist, approach to treaty interpretation has never been popular in international law. Indeed, the VCLT relegates sources shedding light on the intent of the drafters—including the negotiating history (known as travaux préparatoires, or travaux) of a provision—to a secondary role. They can be used only where the text is "ambiguous or obscure," or the plain meaning of the text leads to a "manifestly absurd or unreasonable" result.

One reason that travaux may be somewhat disfavored in international law is the concern that some countries might sign a treaty long after it was negotiated and signed. Should these newcomers be bound not only to the text, but also the informal understandings of the drafters? This would unduly privilege the interpretive positions of the original signatories. Likewise, use of negotiating history—including earlier drafts of a treaty, reports and commentaries, and diplomatic statements—can be selective and easily manipulated. Despite these cautions, use of travaux has become a constant feature of interpretive disputes over treaties.

Teleological. That leaves the third school of interpretation: seeking to effectuate the purpose of a treaty, rather than slavishly following the text or attempting to divine the intent of the drafters. Known in international law as a teleological approach, it can also be called purposivism. It is captured in the VCLT’s requirement that treaties be construed in light of their "object and purpose" and in view of "relevant rules of international law." The goal of this approach is to interpret a treaty in a way that gives scope to the fundamental reason or problem it was supposed to address. This approach is especially common with more "organic" or "constitutional" treaties, including those that establish international institutions (such as the United Nations Charter of 1945) or that fashion a "framework" for further international legislation.

There are limits to teleology in treaty construction, and interpreters cannot take the purpose of a treaty too far. For example, the International Court of Justice has flatly rejected the notion of "maximum effectiveness"— construing a treaty so as to give it the fullest effect. In a 1950 Advisory Opinion, the Court ruled that peace treaties concluded by eastern European states containing arbitration clauses could not be construed so as to give the UN Secretary General the power to appoint arbitrators, if the states themselves had refused to do so. 

Who are considered members of INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY?

MEMBERS OF INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY

  The membership in the International Society of Hypnosis (the International Society) shall consist of Members, Affiliate Members, and Honorary Members. .

The class of Affiliate Member is reserved for those who meet the standards of acceptability and have a serious interest in becoming colleagues but are unable to meet the dues requirement because of national restrictions upon currency exchange. When approved by the Credentials Committee they will be accepted as Affiliate Members, without dues.

Honorary Members shall be elected, upon special invitation and without application, by the Board of Directors, and shall be limited to distinguished scientific contributors to hypnosis. They shall have all the privileges of membership, but shall be free of the obligation to pay membership dues.

Individual applications will be accepted from nations in which one or more Constituent Societies exist only if the applicant is excluded from membership in a Constituent Society solely because of the profession to which he belongs. In such a case his application will be judged according to the standards of the International Society relative to his profession. Otherwise his application will be referred back to a Constituent Society to which he may be eligible. An individual applicant, if approved, will be admitted as a member upon the payment of dues.

What is DIPLOMACY?

Diplomacy (from Latin diploma, meaning an official document, which in turn derives from the Greek δίπλωμα, meaning a folded paper/document) is the art and practice of conducting negotiations between representatives of groups or states. It usually refers to international diplomacy, the conduct of international relations^[1] through the intercession of professional diplomats with regard to issues of peace-making, trade, war, economics, culture,environment and human rights. International treaties are usually negotiated by diplomats prior to endorsement by national politicians. In an informal or social sense, diplomacy is the employment of tact to gain strategic advantage or to find mutually acceptable solutions to a common challenge, one set of tools being the phrasing of statements in a non-confrontational, or polite manner.

The scholarly discipline of diplomatics, dealing with the study of old documents, derives its name from the same source, but its modern meaning is quite distinct from the activity of diplomacy.

What are the DIPLOMATIC AGENTS?

                The convention splits the functions of diplomatic agents into six categories: representing the sending state; protecting the sending state's nationals within the receiving state; negotiating with the receiving state; notifying the sending state of conditions and developments within the receiving state; promoting friendly relations between the two states; and developing economic, cultural, and scientific relations between the two states.

What are the CONSULAR OFFICIALS of a STATE?

The political title Consul is used for the official representatives of the government of one state in the territory of another, normally acting to assist and protect the citizens of the consul's own country, and to facilitate trade and friendship between the peoples of the two countries. A consul is distinguished from an ambassador, the latter being a representative from one head of state to another. There can be only one ambassador from one country to another, representing the first country's head of state to that of the second, and his or her duties revolve around diplomatic relations between the two countries; however, there may be several consuls, one in each of several main cities, providing assistance with bureaucratic issues to both the citizens of the consul's own country travelling or living abroad and to the citizens of the country the consul resides in who wish to travel to or trade with the consul's country.