Domestic Authorities Research Articles

Right to complain about mistreatment in criminal interviews and interrogations following international and EU law and the Méndez Principles

The paper aims to determine the requirements that must be met in the complaint mechanism to prevent torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment in the pretrial proceeding. This paper analyses the International, regional, and EU laws and policy documents of international organisations andhow the recommendations and complaint mechanisms provided by the MéndezPrinciples contribute to the implementation of International and EU law requirements. It includes a list of conditions to ensure an effective complaintmechanism and analyses them. The paper also discusses problematic issues to be solved while establishing an effective complaint mechanism. The authors concluded that the right to complain during a pre-trial investigation requiresa multifaceted approach that incorporates impartiality, clear guidance, confidentiality, evidence-based decision-making, protection from reprisals, andregular evaluation of the existing policies and practices. The guidance and principles provided by the Méndez Principles lack specific details, leaving space for legal discussions. This requires competent domestic authorities to implement comprehensive guidelines and policies.

A sovereign grant and a franchised state: Tin mineral supply chains in south Kivu of eastern Democratic Republic of Congo

In resource extraction regions, nation-states tend to be depicted as the legal authority sanctioning profitable mining operations in close collaboration with corporate actors in their domestic territories. Especially in post-colonial contexts, corporate sovereignty is the term deployed by anthropologists to depict the acts of power by legally sanctioned corporate actors within a space of negotiation authorised by the state. A problem arises with this framing of sovereignty in contexts where the international norms of liberal democracy and development are violated due to constraints on the domestic authority of the state. In this scenario, the international order imposes itself to restore the authority of the state by governmentalising the security, territory, and market access of the state. Through ethnographic and field survey research in south Kivu of eastern Congo, I argue that the restoration and extension of state authority is a grant given to the state on condition of the responsible exercise of norms and practices of international markets. The tin, tantalum and tungsten (3T) mineral supply chain in south Kivu are an example of such a grant extended by international market actors and their related resource policy regimes to strengthen the state by franchising its apparatuses through practical mechanisms and discourse aimed at implementing traceability of so-called conflict minerals. Here, sovereignty is a position that is made by international market rule delivered through infrastructure in the form of 3T-mineral supply chains that franchise the state with the aim of optimising its fiscal reach and penetration among upstream mineral producers in south Kivu.

In the Periphery: Ethical Considerations When Indirectly Involving Children in Research

ABSTRACT In the last decade, there has been an increased focus on child protection cases in the European Court of Human Rights. The heightened attention on child protection underscores the actuality of children’s rights, rendering it an interesting area for researchers in fields such as children’s rights, child protection, or international relations. All judgments from the Court are public. Research on social media data has shown that public data is not necessarily intended for the public. Moreover, in child protection cases, the child is rarely a part of the case. It is the biological parents against the domestic authorities. Nevertheless, the situation the case revolves around includes the child, making the child an indirect part of the judgment. There is little research on the ethical considerations of indirectly involving children in research on court judgments. However, there is abundant research on ethical considerations in researching public data, specifically social media data. By drawing on research on ethical considerations in the use of social media data, this article delves into the ethical consequences of including children indirectly in research. The article pinpoints crucial areas that require special attention from researchers and provides insights on navigating ethical challenges effectively.

Motherhood and Domestic Authority in British and Colonial Quakerism, c.1650–1775

Motherhood and Domestic Authority in British and Colonial Quakerism, c.1650–1775

Environment, Slavery and Agency in Colonial Uruguay, 1750–1810

Abstract In colonial Uruguay black slaves could supervise the work of white creoles and even hold the power to have their wages docked. To most historians this might seem puzzling and almost fictional in the context of the colonial Americas. This article makes sense of the puzzle by examining interactions between the economy and the environment on the Río de la Plata frontier. It argues that the natural world (soils, topography, climate, crops and animals) contributes to explain why this labour system existed, and also why it was efficient, contrary to the historiographical commonplace that enslaved workers would be unable to oversee free labourers effectively. Looking at the experience of both women and men through the lens of gender uncovers the parallels between the authority of these enslaved foremen over free male workers on the open range and their domestic authority over free women, whom they could marry. Their stories invite historians of other places and periods to foreground the environment in the set of structures that can either limit workers’ autonomy or give them strength.

Foreign Relations Law as a Method of Private International Law's Theoretical Self-Reflection and Critique

In this essay, I think with Karen Knop about the heuristic and critical potential of the framework of Foreign Relations Law (FRL) for Private International Law (PrIL). I apply the framework of FRL to the recognition of foreign marriages in Denmark to study how PrIL is operationalized by domestic authorities. FRL helps us see how PrIL's operationalization engages a wide array of legal fields, including Public International Law (PIL), domestic administrative law, and immigration law, as well as the domains of foreign service and foreign policy. In doing so, PrIL in this context draws upon all these fields’ rationales and implicit assumptions. I argue that a FRL perspective not only contributes to PrIL's theoretical self-reflection, but also enhances PrIL's capacity for subversiveness—“its ability to unsettle by showing a given legal system's assumptions and approaches to be a matter of choice rather than simply common sense.”1

Absent Boundaries; Immaterial Bodies

The process ofnaturalising the country will be examined as a practice of domestication andregulation and ultimately a consolidation of both domestic and colonialauthority. With reference to Jane Austen’s MansfieldPark, the paper will focus on domestic order, as it was sustained throughnineteenth-century educational literature, foregrounding the premise on whichdomestic authority and the household became intangible strongholds ofputatively political power.Acting as agents of another body, women ofnineteenth-century domestic novels assume their role as the ambassadors ofabsolute power exercising a moderated supervision within the domestic sphere.Surrendering their individual selves and relinquishing their subjectivity andmaterial presence, they practice an internalised form of domestic authority,effectively regulating the household to the degree that they have disciplinedthe self. Shifting between the authority of the domestic woman and thepatriarch, the novel reveals how the overt force of patriarchal oppression, aswell as practices of undetectable self-regulation, are capable of eitherrelinquishing or sustaining power within the domestic realm. The paper willexplore how the processes of domestication and “ordaining” of the protagonistsbecome a way of augmenting patriarchal power as well as of maintaining theeffective regulation of the household.

De-Europeanization as discursive disengagement: has Georgia “got lost” on its way to European integration?

ABSTRACT This article looks at de-Europeanization as a progressive disengagement between domestic authorities and EU actors manifested through their discourses. The authors view discursive disengagement as consisting of two major aspects: Discursive opposition between domestic authorities and the EU reflected in their conflicting statements and the intensification of this discursive opposition, whereby the domestic authorities’ discourses shift from defensive to offensive ones. The authors trace the respective developments based on the case of Georgia, looking at the discursive interaction between domestic and EU actors in the Georgian TV media from July 2021 to June 2022. The research has revealed Georgian authorities’ discursive opposition to EU actors behind the façade of seemingly pro-European statements. After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, this discursive opposition has escalated and become offensive. The authors use quantitative content analysis to map actor-discourse networks, as well as critical discourse analysis to reveal deeper layers of de-Europeanization discourse.

Justice in conflict: Principle of complementarity or principle of competition?

The establishment of a permanent international criminal court was a necessity and the fear of it infringing on a state's sovereignty was real and ever present. As a result of this fear the International Criminal Court could not be awarded primary jurisdiction, and a compromise had to be reached in which it would operate under a regime of complementarity. This article focuses on the Simone Gbagbo case, as the first woman to be charged by the Court, with the object of nuancing the principle of complementarity in the various stages of an international criminal trial and the extent to which it portrays the tension of state sovereignty, tracing it from its infant historical or rudimentary practices to the current practice and making the necessary recommendations. All of this will be done by contextualising it all within the Cote d'lvoire situation, particularly as it relates to complementarity. The article makes recommendations that focus on how and why the lCC should avoid seeking to dictate and impose its prosecutorial strategy on the domestic officials so as to avoid a crisis of its legitimacy being questioned, and the state's refusal to cooperate with the Court. lt concludes with the caution that when the practices of the lCC and its Prosecutor make charging decisions for the state and embrace undermining the prosecutorial discretion of the domestic authorities, then the principle of complementarity will have been officially decimated and the principle of complementarity officially birthed.

Fixing the Problem of Unlawfully Appointed Judges in Poland in the Light of the ECHR

This article seeks to answer the question of how to deal with the problem of unlawful judicial appointments in Poland in a way consistent with the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). According to the Polish Constitution, appointments of judges are made upon the request of the National Council of the Judiciary (NCJ). After controversial reforms in 2017, this body lost its independence from politicians. In the four judgments issued so far, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) ruled that appointments of Supreme Court judges made upon the request of politicised NCJ were burdened with manifest violation of domestic law and, as a result, panels of courts composed of persons appointed in this way were not ‘tribunal established by law’. Arguably, this conclusion may be extended to other judges appointed in the same way. The question remains, however, what to do with persons appointed with violation of law; in particular, whether such persons can simply be removed from the judiciary. This article argues that even though the domestic authorities have some discretion with regards to choosing the proper measures to fix the problem of unlawfully appointed judges, this is limited by the need to comply with the standards stemming from the ECHR. In particular, it is important to respect unlawfully appointed persons’ right to court. This means that instead of removing all of them without any judicial review, a more individualised approach would be preferable.

Correlation Between EU Ac Quis, Domestic Law and International Law in Light of Legal Governance of the European Patent with Unified Effect

Problem setting. The article is devoted to detection of the legal nature of the relationships between EU Member States’ domestic law and newly-created system of patent law governance, which comprises the Council Regulations 1257/2012 on implementing enhanced cooperation in the area of the creation of unitary patent protection and № 1260/2012 on implementing enhanced cooperation in the area of the creation of unitary patent protection with regard to the applicable translation arrangements as well as the Agreement on a Unified Patent Court. The subject of this research are the potential challenges the enforcement of the EU law may pose to the Unified Patent Court, along with enforcing Contracting State’s domestic law and international treaties, binding to the Contracting States as well as potential threats that can emerge after the Unified Patent Court becomes operational, especially the threat of legal fragmentation in terms of patent relationships. Profound analysis of the rules, that set the procedure of using different types of legislation while hearing the patent disputes cases has been made. The legal opinions of the Court of Justice of the European Union concerning the autonomous judicial bodies and their influence on the EU law have been presented. Potential threats to the EU legal system’s integrity and possible ways of deterring them have been outlined. Comparisons between recent and previous legal problems concerning the field of the EU law integrity have been made. The main arguments of the Court of Justice of the European Union have been studied and the most durable ones have been stressed as the milestones of the future Unified Patent Court legal practice. Conclusions about the importance of domestic and EU law correlation in light of patent legal sphere have been made. The drawbacks of current EU legislation and the need for the Court of Justice of the European Union to reconsider its positions have been mentioned. Analysis of recent researches and publications. The problems of compiling EU rights and national rights of EU member states in the context of their use by EU institutions, as well as other bodies, in particular the ECHR, as well as the question of fragmentation of patent law, were raised by the following EU researchers: Kristof Krenn, Giuseppe Martinico, Jorg Polakiewicz, Sionaidh Douglas-Scott, Steve Peers, Douwe de Lange, Tatiana Komarova. Purpose of the research is to conduct a profound analysis of the problem concerning the use of EU law and other legal sources by the Unified Patent Court during its future legal practice and to study the bonds between the Court of Justice of the European Union, the Unified Patent Court and Contracting Member States and their role in the creation of the new legal framework. Article’s main body. The analytics of the EU patent law harmonization has been an object of attention of many researchers so far. For instance, Reto M. Hilty and the collective of authors, who studied the problem of enforcement of law, that forms the so-called «patent package», explicitly paid their attention to the question of jurisprudence fragmentation, the point of which is that as soon as the Agreement on a Unified Patent Court comes into force, several judicial bodies will cover the territory of the Contracting Member States with their jurisdiction simultaneously. Apart from the national courts, that will deal with the patents, issued by the domestic authorities, the following bodies will execute their functions: the Unified Patent Court on cases concerning the European patent with unitary effect, the Court of Justice of the European Union by issuing its preliminary opinions on the compatibility of the Unified Patent Court’s actions with the EU law and the Boards of Appeal of the European Patent Office by deciding on the administrative lawsuits. The problem of jurisprudence fragmentation entails a vast amount of problems, the answer to which can only be given by means of judicial practice. If we turn our view towards Article 7 of the Council Regulation № 1257/2012, we will notice that this article gives the European patent with unitary effect the meaning of property, that should be equally recognized throughout all the Contracting Member States. This aspect leads to an important conclusion, that will be discussed later in this paper. Conclusions and prospects for the development. To sum this up, it’s worth noting, that the beginning of the Unified Patent Court’s functioning, as well as the moment when the legislation, created by means of enhanced cooperation mechanism, comes into force, will certainly become a remarkable event both to the EU institutions and the Unified Patent Court, since it has the potential to become a strong incentive to reconsideration of current approaches to the cooperation between the EU and international judicial bodies.

POLITICAL BEHAVIOUR OF SULTAN HASANUDDIN AND SULTAN NUKU: Islamic Political Perspective

<p><em>This study aims to elucidate the political conduct of Sultan Hasanuddin and Sultan Nuku. Sultan Hasanuddin was a legitimate political leader who fought with Dutch forces during the mid-17th century. Sultan Nuku, an opposition leader, lacked significant legitimacy and subsequently engaged in conflict with Dutch forces during the late 18th century. The study employs a critical historical method that utilizes an Islamic political concept approach. This method aims to generate a critical historical explanation that promotes a shift from problematic political conduct that conflicts with human values to developmental political conduct based on human values. This study utilizes the Islamic political concept to conclude that Sultan Hasanuddin's political behaviour is noncompliant with the desired Islamic political behaviour, thus, problematic. Islam instructs political leaders to cultivate constructive political conduct when establishing domestic authority. To secure robust support and loyalty for political decisions, an Islamic leader must cultivate three key political behaviours: safeguarding, guiding, and motivating the populace. Sultan Hasanuddin was not responsible. Sultan Hasanuddin's internal political oppression was a vulnerability during the mid-17th century war against the Dutch in South Sulawesi. The study concludes that Sultan Nuku's political conduct aligns with Islamic political norms and is deemed favourable. Sultan Nuku effectively employed political strategies to govern and inspire his subjects. Historical evidence suggests that Islamic political behaviour aided Sultan Nuku in establishing a strong internal force to resist the Dutch. Sultan Nuku's effective political conduct was instrumental in his triumph over the Dutch in the late 18th century in North Maluku.</em></p>

The paradox of global constitutionalism: Between sectoral integration and legitimacy

Abstract The liberal international legal order faces a legitimacy crisis today that becomes visible with the recent anti-internationalist turn, the rise of populism and the recent Russian invasion of Ukraine. Either its authority or legitimacy has been tested many times over the last three decades. The article argues that this anti-internationalist trend may be read as a reaction against the neoliberal form taken by international law, not least over the last three decades. In uncovering the intricacies of international law’s legitimacy crisis, the article uncovers the paradox of global constitutionalism: that its need to adopt a sectoral form of integration may cause a legitimacy gap/deficit because international authorities, resting their legitimacy primarily on instrumental grounds, may face problems in compensating for the legitimacy deficit caused by the erosion of domestic sovereignty and extending their legitimacy to non-instrumental grounds. This paradox has one necessary structural and two contingent content-related implications for domestic democracies: (1) it necessarily narrows down the regulatory space of nation-states; and this may in turn (2) impair democratic stability and solidarity, and (3) provide a fertile ground for populism. Drawing on Raz’s service conception, the article focuses on the interaction between international and domestic authorities and highlights the problematic aspects of the neoliberal constitutionalization of international law.

A Criminological Perspective of the Economic Crimes in Particular Cases of Money Laundering and Tax Evasion

Analysing from the point of view of criminology, the theoretical framework of economic crimes is currently implemented to highlight the investigative activity of those who are interested in approaching the phenomenon in a multidisciplinary context. They primarily involve the criminologists and are secondly organized around their efforts provided both at the European and international levels in finding adequate solutions to combat and to control the phenomenon of these crimes. The main activity in the field of criminological research is then related to maintaining high level of suppressive measures adopted by the domestic authorities, in accordance with the European and international ones, in purpose to gather such a result. The current paper is focused on the most relevant issues in the field of approaching serious crimes from a criminological point of view. The special focus of the research activity is that of analysing the crimes of money laundering and tax evasion, knowing that, in the area of economic crimes, they are the most dangerous phenomenon that existed in practice.

Did small banks trade off lending with government bond purchases during the Sovereign debt crisis?

At the beginning of the decade, many banks in euro-area periphery countries shifted their portfolios from corporate lending towards sovereign debt holdings. According to some scholars, this was the result of the moral suasion exerted by domestic authorities; others suggest instead that it was the outcome of a free choice of weak banks that bet-for-resurrection increasing the holdings of risky, high yielding government bonds. Our analysis shows that the contemporaneous increase in banks’ total assets and the portfolio readjustment from loans to government bonds can be explained by a surge in the risk-premium required by banks on corporate lending. After briefly describing our hypothesis within a simple model of a bank’s portfolio choice, we test its empirical implications on a large sample of individual loan data granted by over 100 Italian small banks during the post sovereign debt crisis period (2012–2014). Our results provide convincing evidence in support of the hypothesis that the banks which increased the most their government bond holdings were also those which reduced more significantly their credit supply.

Activists in international courts: Backlash, funding, and strategy in international legal mobilization

Activists in international courts: Backlash, funding, and strategy in international legal mobilization

ECtHR Cases Sep - Dec 2022

Relying on Article 2 (right to life) of the European Convention on Human Rights, the applicant alleges that the domestic authorities breached their duty to protect his son’s life and complains that the investigation into the circumstances of his death was not effective.

Can governments sleep more soundly when holding international reserves? A banking and financial vulnerabilities perspective*

ABSTRACT We use a sample of 40 developing and emerging countries over the period 1995–2015 to assess the effectiveness of international reserve holding as a crisis mitigator. We test the relevance of the reserve accumulation decreasing returns assumption by estimating the most recent version of the PSTR model. We find that increasing stocks of international reserves allows domestic authorities to mitigate the negative impacts of financial and banking vulnerabilities on GDP growth rates leading to reject the decreasing returns assumption. This evidence is robust to sensitivity checks.

Property rights in theory versus practice: the current process of evaluation and compensation of property in Albania

In the latest and current attempt to solving the 30-year-old problem of the process of restitution of the rights of former owners in Albania, the Government has implemented a new methodology of evaluation of properties to be compensated. However, despite the remedy being in place for more than 6 years now, the domestic authorities have failed to materialize their predictions, with most intermittent deadlines having been missed, due to poor initial planning, numerous delays in implementation, poor execution, as well as necessities in amending the law. At the same time, these delays, especially the Government taking more than a year and a half to institute the necessary amendments to the law, pursuant to the findings of the ECtHR and Constitutional Court, have also put at risk the implementation of the law as a whole and the missing of the final deadline of 2026, for the finalization of the process.

Les biens appartenant aux Juifs. Démocratie ethnique et Shoah, 1944-1946

In the final years of World War II, the atrocities committed by Nazi Germany became widely known in the West. The information, however delayed and fragmentary, reached the exiled representatives of Polish Jewry and the Polish authorities alike, triggering reflections on both sides about the initial implications of the massacre of the nation’s community of three million Jews. One of these implications was the unresolved question of Jewish property, which had seemingly been left heirless in the wake of the mass deaths of Polish Jews. This article examines how the ownership of Jewish property was decided in Poland. Primarily, it discusses the actions of Jewish representatives to the exiled Polish government, especially their initiative, launched in the summer of 1944, to amend the existing Polish inheritance law in light of this unprecedented situation. The initiative lasted merely half a year, apparently thwarted by legislation passed by the Soviet-backed Communist Polish authorities, who had seized power in the recently liberated Polish territories. The January 1945 law on abandoned property pertained not only to Jewish property. In fact, its scope was vastly different than that imagined by the Jewish politicians in exile. It gave pre-war individuals a ten-year window to reclaim their property, after which their rights were transferred to the Polish state. This legal solution conformed to the expectations set forth by the Polish underground and voiced in the underground press. Nevertheless, it did not meet the expectations of Polish Jews.This article seeks to understand the similarities between the exiled and the domestic authorities’ approach to the issue of Jewish property in Poland. It argues that both applied ethnically-oriented policies to Jewish property, in line with the expectations of the Polish society considered in ethnic terms. The actions of Jewish representatives in the exiled Polish institutions concerning Polish legislation constitutes a case of an ethnic minority negotiating its status vis-à-vis the dominating ethnic majority, which meets the model of ethnic democracy (as defined by Sammy Smooha) practiced by the Polish exiled administration during the war. The political takeover by the Polish Communists put an end to ethnic democracy and replaced it with a new Socialist regime. Nonetheless, even though Socialism was introduced to a significantly less heterogeneous society in Poland, the Communist authorities did not shy away from utilizing ethnic policies. The legislation pertaining to abandoned property is a clear case in point.This article contributes to scholarship on the Shoah by drawing attention to how information about the Holocaust reaching the West shaped early reflections about its implications. It thus adds to the understanding of the general dynamics of ethnic minority-ethnic majority relations, particularly in wartime.