In Defence of Due Deference

The doctrine of deference permeates human rights review. It plays a role in defining Convention rights, in determining the nature of the proportionality test applied when analysing non-absolute rights, as well as in deciding the stringency of its application. The role of deference has recently been subjected to both judicial and academic criticism, some of which advocates the demise of the doctrine. This article develops a contextual account of deference that is justified for epistemic reasons, rather than reasons of relative authority. This conception is able to withstand current criticism and is modest enough to play a role in a range of different justifications and understandings of judicial review under the Human Rights Act. The article then provides a more detailed account of deference, taking account of the relative institutional features of the legislature, executive and judiciary, without running the risk that the court fails to perform its constitutional function of protecting individual rights.     

Former Yugoslav space: The ‘eastern question’ and European security

This article begins by tracking the footprints left by politicians, statesmen, and diplomats who set out to solve the ‘Eastern Question’ created by the collapse of the Ottoman, Habsburg, and Russian Empires in southeastern Europe. The analysis focuses on the consequences within former Yugoslav space of outcomes created by competing agendas of these international power brokers and political/military leaders of state‐building nations fighting to gain or expand territorial homelands in the name of historic justice or self‐determination. It concludes by evaluating security policy and options in Kosovo as of January 1999.     

Transnational Organized Crime: A European Perspective

One of the most controversial issues the United States has to deal with since the beginning of the 2003 war in Iraq is the Mujahedeen a-Khalk (MEK). For more than two decades the organization had been the major armed opposition to the Iranian government and, at the same time, had been a close ally to Saddam Hussein's regime. This study examines the history of the MEK, the debate within the Bush administration on what to do with the MEK fighters, and the solutions proposed by the Iraqi Governing Council, the Iranian government, and the United States. The analysis suggests that operationally and ideologically the MEK has reached a dead end.‐