Now available as an eBook for the first time, this 2006 book from the Melland Schill series considers the main legal issues concerning the use of force by international organisations and states. It assesses the achievements and failures of the United Nations' collective security system, and discusses the prospects ahead. It also deals with the use of force by states in self-defence and on other legal grounds. The book discusses to what extent the rules on the use of force have evolved since the end of the Cold War in order to meet the needs of the international community. It focuses in particular on the military operations directed against terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. The research is developed from the standpoint of the sources of international law. It rejects a static vision of the rules on the use of force, including those enshrined in the UN Charter. Rather, it highlights the interaction between conventional and customary international law and the exposure of both sources to state practice.

While espionage between states is a practice dating back centuries, the emergence of the internet revolutionised the types and scale of intelligence activities, creating drastic new challenges for the traditional legal frameworks governing them. This book argues that cyber-espionage has come to have an uneasy status in law: it is not prohibited, because spying does not result in an internationally wrongful act, but neither is it authorised or permitted, because states are free to resist foreign cyber-espionage activities. Rather than seeking further regulation, however, governments have remained purposefully silent, leaving them free to pursue cyber-espionage themselves at the same time as they adopt measures to prevent falling victim to it. Drawing on detailed analysis of state practice and examples from sovereignty, diplomacy, human rights and economic law, this book offers a comprehensive overview of the current legal status of cyber-espionage, as well as future directions for research and policy. It is an essential resource for scholars and practitioners in international law, as well as anyone interested in the future of cyber-security.

Now available as an eBook for the first time, this 2000 book from the Melland Schill series looks at the humanitarian intervention at the centre of legal, political and ethical discourse as the ‘century of violence’ ended. Increasing recourse to such a doctrine was occasioning widespread reflection on the big questions of how and why states behave, whether there is a meaningful concept of an international community, how fundamental values are determined and how they relate to each other. Jurisprudence of international law poses challenges to thinking and argumentation, and proposes a redescription of humanitarian intervention. The book presents and evaluates the bearing of legal theories - natural law, positivism, realism and critical theory - on humanitarian intervention and how the legal framework, in particular Articles 2(4) and 51 of the United Nations Charter, is moulded by theoretical arguments and influences state practice. Tsagourias develops a discursive model where the value of human dignity is attained through dialogue, reflection, and projection embedded in a sense of responsibility and human solidarity. The book revisits humanitarian intervention from the perspective of human dignity by re-combining theory, doctrine and practice within a discursive process. This book is written for theorists and practitioners of both international law and international relations.

Now available as an ebook for the first time, this 2000 title in the Melland Schill Studies in International Law series is an examination of key issues concerning the treatment of foreign investment and the taxation of investors. It looks at some of the challenges which globalization has thrown up for the international community from a legal perspective and sets developments alongside more traditional approaches. Particular attention is paid to the needs and aspirations of developing countries and the implications for them of free trade orthodoxy. After outlining the established framework of laws concerning investment protection and taxation, the author looks at experiences in the European Union and the North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement and at a range of disputes and legal developments to assess whether international legal regimes are responding adequately to meet the needs of states and investors alike. OECD initiatives on taxation and the aborted Multilateral Agreement on Investment negotiations are examined in conjunction with the relevant provisions of the World Trade Organization Agreements.

This book provides a concise account of the principles and norms of international law applicable to the main-type of international organisation - the inter-governmental organisation (IGO). That law consists of principles and rules found in the founding documents of IGOs along with applicable principles and rules of international law. The book also identifies and analyses the law produced by IGOs, applied by them and, occasionally, enforced by them. There is a concentration upon the United Nations, as the paradigmatic IGO, not only upon the UN organisation headquartered in New York, but on other IGOs in the UN system (the specialised agencies such as the World Health Organisation).

Now available as an eBook for the first time, this 2005 title in the Melland Schill series asks: Can the use of children as soldiers be effectively regulated at an international level? Child soldiers in international law examines how international law has developed to deal with this problematic and emotive issue. Happold looks at the rules restricting the recruitment of children into armed forces - rules which, though important, are often flouted - but also at the wider legal issues arising from child soldiering: to what extent can child soldiers be held criminally liable for their conduct? How should they be treated when captured? How are states obliged to demobilise and reintegrate them into their societies? It also identifies a move away towards enforcement, through the prosecution of those who recruit child soldiers, and proposals for Security Council sanctions against governments and groups who breach their international obligations by using children in armed conflicts. This study will be essential reading for those concerned with public international law, human rights, and the United Nations and peacekeeping.

This electronic version has been made available under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-ND) open access license. Violence against women is characterised by its universality, the multiplicity of its forms, and the intersectionality of diverse kinds of discrimination against women. Great emphasis in legal analysis has been placed on sex-based discrimination; however, in investigations of violence, one aspect has been overlooked: violence may severely affect women’s health and access to reproductive health, and State health policies might be a cause of violence against women. Exploring the relationship between violence against women and women’s rights to health and reproductive health, Sara De Vido theorises the new concept of violence against women’s health in international law using the Hippocratic paradigm, enriching human rights-based approaches to women’s autonomy and reflecting on the pervasiveness of patterns of discrimination. At the core of the book are two dimensions of violence: horizontal ‘inter-personal’, and vertical ‘state policies’. Investigating these dimensions through decisions made by domestic, regional and international judicial or quasi-judicial bodies, De Vido reconceptualises States’ obligations and eventually asks whether international law itself is the ultimate cause of violence against women’s health.