Making the investment provisions of the Energy Charter Treaty sustainable development friendly

The International Energy Agency estimates that $16 trillion of investment will be needed to meet world energy requirements from 2003 to 2030. The world's poorest countries, where some of the fastest rates of increase in energy production are expected, will require a significant portion of this investment. Energy investment, both as a source of foreign exchange and to expand local access to electricity and other forms of energy, is integral to socioeconomic development. It is reasonable to expect that this anticipated investment will witness a significant number of disputes between investors and host governments. A fair and just dispute settlement system can help promote the needed investment and sustainable development. The Energy Charter Treaty (ECT) takes a comprehensive approach to the international energy sector, including coverage of trade, transit, competition and the environment, but its investment provisions have proven most significant with three international arbitral tribunals having issued decisions under the treaty and more disputes pending. While much of the ECT's effort has been to bridge the former East–West economic divide, the Treaty's scope of application is potentially worldwide, and given the inextricable link between energy, development and the environment it makes sense that the Treaty process forge a developing-country regime, one that promotes the development of energy resources and sustainable development. Drawing upon the work of Konrad von Moltke and the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) and in light of tribunal decisions to date, this essay maintains, inter alia, that the ECT should impose basic transparency and good faith requirements on investors and create a special developing-country regime, promoting sustainable development.

论中国和平发展与国际法的交互影响和作用

A peaceful and harmonious world is an important social basis for China’s peaceful development, and international law lays a legal foundation and guarantee for building such a world. In the “village of globe” with co-existence and economic globalization, international law provides China a peaceful development with legal certainty in external environment of peace and security, fair and equal international competitive order, and international cooperation; and on the other hand, it puts on an increasing legal restraint on the internal and external strategies of China’s peaceful development. At the same time, the peaceful development of China deems to make a great contribution to the world, which are the main subject of international law in peace and development, as well as to human rights, rule of law and democracy, which are the universal values pursued by international law. Zeng Lingliang, Ph.D of law, is presently a dean and professor in the Faculty of Law in University of Macau. He is an awardee of the Cheung Kong Scholars Award Program and Jean Monnet Chair of European Union Law in Wuhan University, and one of the first three individuals nominated by the China government on the list of panelists in the WTO. He has published many articles on WTO issues, EU law and international law, and his influenced monographs are European Communities and Modern International Law (1992) and its revised edition—European Union and Modern International Law (1994), Law of World Trade Organization (1996), International Law and China in the Early 21 ^st Century (2005) and the Essentials of EU Law—in the New Perspective of the Treaty on the Constitution for Europe (2007).     

The Role of the State and International Organizations inReconciling Sustainable Development and Globalization

The concepts of sustainable development and globalization have developed separately, with little recognition that there is significant overlap between them. This article seeks to argue that there is a need to try to reconcile these concepts and that, in particular, it is a fundamental mistake to consider globalization as inevitable whilst seeing sustainable development as an optional policy choice. In seeking to achieve this reconciliation, the role of the State and international organizations in maintaining public governance is reaffirmed.     

论我国的绿色消费及其法律保障

绿色消费是全球化背景下消费者运动的一个趋势,旨在强调消费过程中的环境保护,加大产品循环使用的程度,减少能源消耗与污染,更高程度地保障消费者的身体健康。目前,世界各国多以政府绿色采购为全民消费的导向,支持绿色消费运动的发展。我国应当在消费者权益保护法中确立政府倡导、鼓励绿色消费的原则,突出消费者的绿色消费权的保护。同时,通过政府绿色采购、绿色产品税费的减免,对绿色生产、绿色消费实行积极的扶植与支持政策,为推动绿色消费、为我国经济的可持续发展奠定必要的物质基础。     

Development of the Nationality Law of China

With the deepening of globalization, many provisions in the Nationality Law of China promulgated in 1980 are already out of time and some provisions are easy to trigger dual nationalities. Consequently, while sticking to the basic principle of the Nationality Law, certain provisions of the Nationality Law of China should be gradually improved according to the present situation of international and domestic development, and the implementing guidelines for the Nationality Law should be introduced to construct a relatively complete legal system to adjust and regulate various relationships of nationality. Song Xixiang, majoring in international law, Hong Kong and Macao law, is a professor of law and the dean of Law School of Shanghai International Studies University. Now, he is also a doctoral candidate of Wuhan University. Meanwhile, Prof. Song is an executive director of the China Society of Private International Law and of the China Society of International Law and of the China Society of International Economical Law, etc. Moreover, he is a vice chairman of Hong Kong and Macao and Taiwan Law Association.     

Hawala--A Vestige of the Past in the Service of Globalization

V.G. Khoros: Evgenii Maksimovich, your political biography took shape during both the Soviet and the post-Soviet periods. Over the last fifteen years, a lot has changed on our planet. The second world has become a thing of the past. The first world—that is, the most highly developed countries—has entered the postindustrial stage. Today, it dominates the world market in technology, finance, and information and acts as a conductor of international relations (for instance, the policy of NATO expansion). As a person who has met many leaders of the West and the East, how do you perceive this difference in the times? How do you assess the impact of globalization, which proceeds primarily from the center to the rest of the world, the so-called periphery (to which Russia, unfortunately, increasingly belongs)?     

Globalization through the Lens of Palace Wars: What Elite Lawyers' Careers Can and Cannot Tell Us about Globalization of Law

Yves Dezalay and Bryant Garth's three studies—Dealing in Virtue (1996), The Internationalization of Palace Wars (2002), Asian Legal Revivals (2010)—trace the globalization of law through “palace wars” among elites for positions in the “fields of state power.” They conclude that globalization occurs through links among elites engaged in their domestic palace wars, which independently establish the symbolic power of law in each state. The article argues that while Dezalay and Garth provide an invaluable new starting point for further research, they do not adequately consider an emerging field of research documenting alternative pathways of legal development pursued by local activists inside and outside the new states of the Global South.     

经济全球化背景下的西方文明

近代西方文明的发展表现出对世界经济的深刻影响力,全球化已成为不以人们意志为转移的历史趋势。在全球化的背景下,西方文化加紧了对外扩张的步伐,而其实质则是利益的扩张。清醒地认识这一点,是我们在文化发展中既顺应文化融合的大潮,积极与世界沟通对话;同时又不受制于西方文化扩张的影响,熔东西方文明于一炉,从而为世界经济的发展提供不竭动力,并使经济全球化的进程沿着我们所期待的方向发展的前提。     

Technology transfer,the environment,and the third world: Having one's cake and eating it

With the end of the Cold War, the major trend of the next century will be the development of competitive export economies in third world countries. In this paper, an on-going experiment in Mexico is reported. The experiment features the transfer of technology with a minimum adverse environmental impact. The goal is to develop sustainable integration into global markets by transferring technology that is both cost and quality competitive and environmentally safe. The target group is Mexican subsistence producers.His most recent book is Volunteerism and World Development: Pathway to a New World (Praeger).     

Council of Europe/UNEP,Pan‐European biological and landscape diversity strategy,Invasive Alien Species

Abstract

The notion of sustainable development has become, over the last fifteen years, an integral part of international environmental law and policy. It is recognition that environmental issues do not exist in a vacuum, but rather arc part of much wider structural issues involving both economic and social dimensions. However, does this concern for sustainable development now mean that protecting the natural environment is no longer about ecological conservation per se, but rather is simply abour ensuring an adequate environment to maintain economic development? And if so, what of those environments where the economic value is a secondary consideration? Or where human activity has a disproportionate effect? Can sustainable development be interpreted in a way that reconciles these seemingly opposite demands? This paper examines these issues from the perspective of the 1991 Madrid Protocol on Environmental Protection to the 1959 Antarctic Treaty. It will suggest that sustainable development is a broader concept than one that simply requires an instrumental approach to environmental protection. In fact, the paper will conclude that sustainable development is a relatively meaningless notion if it docs not also contain a strong element of environmental conservation, and not only in such ecologically important areas as Antarctica.     

Developing Countries and Global Environmental Governance: From Contestation to Participation to Engagement

Developing countries did not start off as demandeurs of global environmental governance. Although they are still rather skeptical about the global environmental enterprise, they have come a long way from being the vigorous contestants that they were three decades ago. This fascinating evolution has not only changed the views of developing countries but has also transformed the shape of the global environmental discourse, most significantly by turning what used to be global environmental politics into what is now the global politics of sustainable development. This paper charts this evolution by using the twin conceptual lenses of effectiveness and legitimacy and the heuristic markers of the three key global conferences on the global environment (Stockholm 1972; Rio de Janeiro 1992; Johannesburg 2002). The paper argues that the pre-Stockholm era was exemplified by a politics of contestation by the South; the Stockholm-to-Rio period was a period of reluctant participation as a new global compact emerged around the notion of sustainable development; and the post-Rio years have seen the emergence of more meaningful, but still hesitant, engagement by the developing countries in the global environmental project but very much around the promise and potential of actualizing sustainable development. The author is grateful to an anonymous review, and to Steinar Andresen, Ellen Hey, and Jessica Green for valuable comments.     

Non-State Actors in International Law: A Rejoinder to Professor Thirlway

That we consider the state-based system as best representing the individual is the product of a particular world view. A ‘naturalized myth’ renders inevitable the link between the physicality of the observable landscape and the state as a means of organizing a polity. This myth lingers on in international legal scholarship, although it has been debunked in other disciplines, notably in critical political geography. (Public) international lawyers can learn from their brethren in other disciplines and problematize the territorial state as a contingent political concept. Awareness of the social production of space may allow lawyers to imagine practices of resistance to the spatial status quo, in particular rights of non-state actors in the production of international law, alongside states, and obligations and responsibilities of non-state actors, especially where states have proved unable to properly assume roles of protection vis-à-vis individuals under their formal jurisdiction.

     

国际私法中主权原则的承载及变迁

传统上,法律冲突的解决总是与国家主权原则联系在一起。经济全球化的浪潮从根本上对传统主权国家之间规范权力的分配提出挑战。国际私法中非主权化趋势越来越明显:1、在非国家层面上更多的规范选择;2、法律的统一化运动;3、全球法律的协调与合作。     

全球化与法律发展的价值选择

全球化浪潮使得商品生产交换条件遍及全球,为法律的共同性因素的增长起到了奠基作用;与此同时,西方资本主义的法律文明,伴随其经济、政治的扩张和“西方中心主义”价值观的推行,逐渐构筑起“法律殖民主义”的巢穴。因此,在全球化现象面前。我们一方面要把握住法律发展的共同性因素,创制顺应全球化社会生活条件的法律制度;另一方面,则应依据主权原则认同国际交往规则,防范“法律殖民主义”陷阱和“法律全球化”思维误区。     

21世纪中国国际私法的发展与展望

二十世纪国际私法的立法和学说的发展历史值得借鉴,二十一世纪世界经济一体化的发展,使得整个国际社会的国际私法呈现出多种多样的发展趋势;结合中国国情,我国国际私法未来发展,必须理论联系实践,建立中国特色的国际私法学,制定颁布中国的国际私法法典,使二十一世纪中国国际私法的发展具有广阔的前景。     

全球化背景下世界经济发展的双重趋势

经济全球化是当今世界经济发展中最为突出的一个重大特征和趋势。在经济全球化的推动下,世界经济运动在多方面呈现出双重发展趋势,即经济增长轨迹上升和波动趋势并存,区域集团化和经济民族化趋势并存,新经济技术迅速发展和不平衡加剧趋势并存,世界经济格局单极化和多极化趋势并存,各国强化市场机制和发挥政府作用趋势并存,国际经济合作协调和对立冲突趋势并存。正确认识世界经济发展的双重趋势,可使我们认清经济全球化对我们带来的各种机遇和挑战,采取积极有效的对策,趋利避害。     

The world of committee reports: rapporteurship assignment in the European Parliament

The academic world has shown increasing interest in the European Parliament (EP), but still more has to be done to open the ‘black box’ of its micro-management. This study is an attempt to show that puzzles in the internal workings of the EP are far from being solved or understood. Its purpose is three-pronged: First, it illustrates that the world of committee reports is characterised by disproportionality which contradicts the overall principle laid down in the standing rules of the EP. Second, the study attempts to explain and understand rapporteurship allocation. Focusing on the consumer and environment committee in the fourth term of the EP, the results indicate that the group of rapporteurs consists of members with high demands for the policy in their jurisdiction. Its preferences systematically differ from those of the legislature as a whole. Third, this article discusses four aspects that deserve further elaboration in future studies on the EP's internal organisation.     

Comments on Illegal War and Illegal Conduct: Are the Two Related?

This article examines whether there is a link between the legality or otherwise of an armed conflict under jus ad bellum and the subsequent conduct of the campaign under jus in bello. This is done by comparing two conflicts where the legality was not in serious dispute, the Falklands/Malvinas conflict and the Iraq War 1990–1991, and three where the legality has been questioned, Kosovo 1999, the ‘global war on terror’ and the Iraq War 2003. In looking for a common link, the author is drawn away from concerns over the jus ad bellum to doubts over the content of the relevant law governing the conduct of hostilities. Uncertainties in the law have occurred both from the extension to non-international armed conflict of ‘Hague law’, traditionally applicable only in international armed conflicts, and the overlap between human rights law and the law of armed conflict. The author concludes that there is a danger that the balance between military necessity and humanity may be disturbed so that the law will become impracticable in the cauldron of conflict to the detriment of all, soldier and civilian alike.

     

法律全球化与法制现代化论略

在"全球化"和"现代化"的浪潮下,"法律全球化"和"法制现代化"不仅是现代法理学所密切关注的理论课题,而且也是世界各国法制建设不可忽视的重大问题。法律全球化必将推进法制现代化的进程,而法制现代化也将会对法律全球化产生深远的影响,二者关系密切,交相互动,共同推动法治的进程。在当下中国,只有辩证地处理好"法律全球化"和"法制现代化"的关系,完善立法体系,繁荣法学研究,才能更好地促进我国法制现代化的良性发展,为建立和谐社会提供法制保障。     

The Common Core between Human Rights Law and International Criminal Law: A Structural Account

Legal scholars and theorists have recently drawn a more sustained attention to the link between international human rights law (hereafter IHRL) and international criminal law (hereafter ICL). This concerns both positive and more normative accounts of the link. Whether positive or normative, the predominant approach to constructing the link is substantive. This overlap is normatively justified in similar terms by reference to a subset of moral human rights. In this paper, I offer an alternative to the substantive approach. After identifying two flaws in the substantive approach (the problem of threshold and the problem of ethical neutrality), I defend what I call a structural account by focusing on duty‐holders. I start by reconstructing two structural characteristics common to IHRL and ICL qua international legal regimes: who has the authority to address violations of IHRL and ICL, and who can be liable for those violations. I then infer that public authority (functionally construed) constitutes the common structural core of IHRL and ICL. I rely on the extraterritorial application of IHRL and on the collective dimension of ICL violations to further support the argument. I finally offer an argument explaining the normative point of those structural features. I hold that IHRL and ICL (their adjudicative and liability regimes) are both necessary (but clearly not sufficient) to render this exercise of public authority legitimate to its subjects.