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Introduction This chapter and the next examine various modes of international law- making to investigate the interests and perspectives they support. Here, we describe the law with respect to customary international law, general principles of law and subsidiary sources of law. Chapter 4 looks more specifically at the law of treaties. We deal with the traditional
This article studies one of the humanitarian challenges caused by the COVID-19 crisis: the dignified handling of the mortal remains of individuals that have died from COVID-19 in Muslim contexts. It illustrates the discussion with examples from Sunni Muslim-majority states when relevant, such as Egypt, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Morocco and Pakistan, and examples from English-speaking non-Muslim majority states such as the United Kingdom, the United States of America, Canada and Australia as well as Sri Lanka. The article finds that the case of the management of dead bodies of people who have died from COVID-19 has shown that the creativity and flexibility enshrined in the Islamic law-making logic and methodology, on the one hand, and the cooperation between Muslim jurists and specialised medical and forensic experts, on the other, have contributed to saving people’s lives and mitigating the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic in Muslim contexts.
This collection of chapters provides the most comprehensive study of the theory and practice on the contribution of international organisations and non-State actors to the formation of customary international law. It offers new practical and theoretical perspectives on one of the most complex questions about the making of international law, namely the possibility that actors other than states contribute to the making of customary international law. Notwithstanding the completion by the International Law Commission of its work on the identification of customary international law, the making of customary international law remains riddled with acute practical and theoretical controversies which have been left unresolved and which continue to be intensively debated in both practice and scholarship. Making extensively reference to the case-law of international law courts and tribunals as well as the practice of treaty-monitoring bodies while also engaging with the most recent scholarly work on customary international law, this new volume provides innovative tools and guidance to legal scholars, researchers in law, law students, lecturers in law, practitioners, legal advisers, judges, arbitrators, and counsels as well as tools to address contemporary questions of international law-making.
178 5 Where we stand now: an overview of the role of the Oireachtas in European Union affairs Introduction This chapter describes the role of the Oireachtas in European affairs in the 30th Dáil (2007–11) and 31st Dáil (2011–16), the two most recently completed legislative periods.1 There are three main aspects to parliament’s relationship with Government. First, parliament has a role in forming and dismissing governments. Secondly, parliament has a role in policy-making and law-making. Thirdly, parliament has a role in rendering the Government accountable.2
of law-making itself, myths are created and retained. Ronnie Lippens has carved an international reputation through his use of both philosophical and artistic insights into the criminological canon. In his chapter, ‘Forward! Coding, decoding and recoding order in public art for urban regeneration’, he explores how public artworks are themselves part of a system of coding and recoding that informs both our ethics and our aesthetics. His contribution explores the coded dimension of large public artworks (sculptures or installations in particular). Public space is
permissible means of reaction – issues explored further in Chapter 4 . 65 Treaties are typically discussed by scholars in terms of whether they are ‘contract treaties’ or ‘law-making treaties’. 66 Treaties that are contracts create obligations on the parties that agree to enter into them. 67 In the period 700 to 1200, some of the obligations and duties created were very general. The best examples of this are often alliances or
the United Nations Human Rights Treaty Bodies ( ILA 2004 ). 8 International Law Commission, ‘First report on formation and evidence of customary international law’, UN Doc A/CN.4/663 (17 May 2013) (First report on customary international law) paras 24–27. See also A Bianchi , ‘ Human Rights and the Magic of Jus Cogens ’ ( 2008 ) 19 EJIL 491 . 9 McCall-Smith (n 7); K McCall-Smith , ‘ Reservations and the Determinative Function of Human Rights Treaty Bodies ’ ( 2012 ) 54 German YbIL 521 . See , generally, G Ulfstein , ‘ Law-Making by
This chapter argues that international organisations can be conducive to the emergence or consolidation of the customary status of those primary rules of international law which their sanctions are meant to vindicate. It shows that the contribution of sanctions to the formation of custom varies significantly depending on the concrete situation. In cases where international organisations react to breaches of obligations that already have an erga omnes status and their standing to adopt sanctions is uncontested under the law of countermeasures, international organisations contribute to consolidation and clarification of custom. Ironically, however, the potential for customary law-making is greater when the erga omnes status of an obligation towards which an international organisation is reacting to is not yet confirmed. The illegality or legal uncertainty shrouding such sanctions under the law of responsibility does not preclude their potential in customary law-making – in fact, it may maximise their contribution. In discussing these situations, the present chapter makes an important distinction between the act of sanction and the act of protest. This makes it possible to argue that it is protests accompanying the act of sanction that have a role to play in custom-making, rather than the act of sanction itself.
Law and healing is a colourful and critical account of the longstanding ‘marriage’ between two fundamental pillars of human society, law and medicine. The book addresses medico-legal history, exploring aspects of English law’s fascinating and sometimes acrimonious relationship with healing and healers. It challenges assumptions that medical law is new and that when law engaged with medicine, judges deferred to the ‘medical man’. It traces the regulation of healing from the dominance of the Church, and goes on to examine how the battles between different groups of lay ‘doctors’, physicians, surgeons and apothecaries were fought out in the law courts, the Royal Court and Parliament. Malpractice litigation and predictions of malpractice crises are shown to date back to the fourteenth century. Evidence of judicial deference is scant until late in the nineteenth century. Medical law today addresses moral dilemmas arising in medical practice and biomedical science. Considering historical perceptions of the human body from the womb to the grave, this work identifies themes persisting through medico-legal history and how history repeats itself. The book assesses both how English law responded to changes in ‘scientific’ understanding of bodies and how ‘science’, or what was thought to be science, influenced law. Bizarre theories about biology are seen to buttress laws of primogeniture and legal incapacities imposed on married women. The book considers how in the nineteenth century medical practitioners gradually acquired a strong voice in law-making on morals as much as medical practice.