Domestic Legal Research Articles

Environmental Law and Policy in BRICS Countries: Legal Analyses of Sustainable Development Goals and Enforcement Strategies’ ’Human Rights in BRICS: A Comparative Approach to International Standards and Domestic Legal Systems

This paper examines the legal frameworks and enforcement strategies related to environmental governance and human rights in BRICS countries-Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. Through normative analysis, the study explores the alignment of national laws with Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and international human rights standards. The findings reveal significant variations in legislative approaches and enforcement mechanisms across BRICS nations, influenced by socio-economic priorities and institutional capacities. The analysis highlights the challenges of balancing economic growth with sustainability and social equity while identifying best practices and opportunities for regional collaboration. This study contributes to the discourse on sustainable development by emphasizing the need for integrated legal approaches to environmental governance and human rights protection in BRICS countries.

International and Domestic Legal Regulation of Transnational Shipments

International and Domestic Legal Regulation of Transnational Shipments

Post-WWII Reforms: How the U.S. Transformed Japans Domestic Legal System

Abstract: The deep connection between the U.S. and Japan began at the end of World War II and has transformed from an initial enemy relationship to the U.S. occupation of Japan to the current deep strategic partnership. The U.S. undertook a thorough legal reconstruction during the occupation of Japan. From the representative contents of the changes, the cabinet officials and the Supreme Commander for the Allied Power, who was the U.S.'s all-powerful leader in the legal reconstruction process, the analysis of the entanglement and bargaining between the U.S. and Japan in the process of legal changes and the characteristics of the law after the changes were made. In this way, the fundamental interests of both sides are analyzed. It is found that the U.S. dominated the legal aspects to serve its strategic objectives in Asia. For instance, ensuring that Japan no longer became a threat of war, while using Japan to hamstring socialist expansion in Asia. The Japanese cabinet was not influential enough in reconstructing the law.

The Importance of Accounting for the Dead in Migration

Executive Summary This article highlights the importance of accounting for the dead in migration contexts, from international humanitarian law (IHL), international human rights law (IHRL), and forensic perspectives. Starting by reviewing obligations under IHL and IHRL for the processes of accounting, the article discusses forensic action and the role that accounting can play to protect the dead and clarify the fate and whereabouts of the missing for their families. Considering the complexity of missing and deceased migrant cases, this problem must be approached from several complementary angles, including States codifying international legal obligations related to accounting for the dead in domestic legal or policy frameworks; developing national mechanisms to collect, centralize, and report disaggregated information on migrant deaths; addressing migrant deaths from a public health perspective; pursuing identification efforts including participating in transnational coordination mechanisms; developing strong partnerships with civil society actors; and coupling accounting initiatives with policies that promote the search for missing migrants.

Teaching human rights-based social work in Australia – drawing from practice experiences in diverse environments

ABSTRACT This reflective piece considers the author’s formative professional experiences including working in the criminal justice system in Central Australia, and conducting humanitarian monitoring of immigration detention centers across Australia, both environments where the human rights of those impacted were constrained through the domestic legal frameworks. By utilizing these experiences to illustrate the strength of embracing a human rights-based approach within social work in Australia, the author emphasizes that this approach is broader than the construct of domestic legality alone. Having recently completed her doctoral thesis exploring the lived experiences of youth detention in New South Wales, the author describes how she frames her emerging social work teaching practice through using her professional background, incorporating case studies, and facilitating discussions in a dynamic, flipped classroom. The author emphasizes in her teaching that social workers are positioned as human rights-focused practitioners, noting that the law, not infrequently, contravenes basic human rights standards, or is not enforced with an overarching human rights-based ethos or approach. Ethical and reflective human rights-focused social work practice in Australia is vital within this country marred by deepening inequalities and the on-going destructive processes of colonization.

International Media Coverage of Domestic Legal News: The Case of the Dispute over the Presidential Pardon Power in Poland

International Media Coverage of Domestic Legal News: The Case of the Dispute over the Presidential Pardon Power in Poland

Taking Equity into Account in International and Domestic Legal Frameworks on Compensation for Climate Change and the Energy Transition

Taking Equity into Account in International and Domestic Legal Frameworks on Compensation for Climate Change and the Energy Transition

The Concept of a Systemic (Systematic) Interpretation of Law in Domestic Legal Science XIX – Early XX Centuries

The article concentrates on the study of issues of the systemic way of interpreting of legal norms through from the stand-point of pre-revolutionary lawyers. The selection of ways to interpret legal norms began at the end of the 19th century but active research of interpreting legal norms didn’t start until the beginning of the 20th century. At the same time the systemic method of interpretation of legal norms is mentioned only in passing in these studies. The authors of the article have come to the conclusion that in the domestic pre-revolutionary legal science there were two main positions in relation to the systemic interpretation. The first one is that some authors following the position of the famous German lawyer K. Savigny considered it an independent interpretation. The second, other lawyers considered the systematic way of interpreting the legal norms as a part (reception, method, element) of a logical (real) interpretation.

Wielding the Gavel or Balancing the Scales? Domestic Legal Systems and Post-Conflict Justice

This study analyzes the institutional variation across domestic legal systems, with a focus on common law system’s adherence to precedent and reduced recourse to judicial deference, as well as on the degree of independence afforded to courts. These institutional qualities of judiciaries provide the opportunity for courts to play a more active role in the implementation of post-conflict justice, increasing uncertainty for other policymakers concerning the ultimate contours of post-conflict justice processes. To reduce such uncertainty, policymakers ensconced in these types of institutional contexts will be less likely to implement post-conflict justice. Using data from the Post-Conflict Justice dataset, we find that states with common law systems are less likely to pursue and implement post-conflict justice compared to states with civil or Islamic law systems. Moreover, independent courts will be less likely to pursue mixed or restorative forms post-conflict justice, though the impact of judicial independence is weak overall.

Private Investments, Public Goods: Regulating Markets for Sustainable Development

In the new ecosystem for financing the sustainable development goals (SDGs), private actors are no longer passive bystanders in the development process, nor engaged merely as clients or contractors but as co-investors and co-producers in development projects and programmes. This ‘private turn’ in the financing of international development and other global public goods sees the enmeshment of public and private finance that brings aid and other forms of official development finance into sharp contact with regulatory regimes commonly associated with commercial investments, capital markets and corporate activity. The shift away from public resources for financing (e.g., multilateral sovereign loans) to leveraging financial markets for development capital (e.g., equity and portfolio investments) will insert countries into global financial markets and engagements with corporate actors in ways that will change forms of regulation, accountability and transparency of public finance. Zooming in on the creation of markets for sustainable development investments (SDI), this paper explores how this broader ‘reengineering of public finance’ is establishing new forms of governance that are restructuring the relationship between states and markets and between transnational capital and their host communities. Specifically, the movement towards private investments and financial markets as key drivers of financing for sustainable development has two critical impacts on transnational governance: (a) the use of private markets, in their capital allocation roles, as quasi-regulatory tools for achieving the SDGs and other global public goods; and (b) the deployment of private regulatory regimes (e.g., contracts, codes of conduct, corporate governance codes) as mechanisms to govern the social and environmental externalities of transnational economic activity. These developments have wide-ranging impacts on the domestic legal, political and civic constitution of states that can paradoxically constrain fiscal and policy space for enabling the attainment of the SDGs.

Indigenous Rights and Interests in a Changing Arctic Ocean: Canadian and Russian Experiences and Challenges

The Arctic has been home to Indigenous peoples since long before the international legal system of sovereign states came into existence. International law has increasingly recognized the rights of Indigenous peoples, who also have status as Permanent Participants in the Arctic Council. In northern Canada, the majority of those who live in the Arctic are recognized as Indigenous. However, in northern Russia, a much smaller percentage of the population is identified as Indigenous, as legal recognition is only accorded to groups with a small population size. This article will compare Russian and Canadian approaches to recognition of Indigenous peoples and Indigenous rights in the Arctic with attention to the implications for Arctic Ocean governance. The article first introduces international legal instruments of importance to Indigenous peoples and their rights in the Arctic. Then it considers the domestic legal and policy frameworks that define Indigenous rights and interests in Russia and Canada. Despite both states being members of the Arctic Council and parties to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, there are many differences in their treatment of Indigenous peoples with implications for Arctic Ocean governance.

Waging External Struggle through Law: China’s Emerging Domestic Legal Capacity and its Legal Response to Nancy Pelosi’s Taiwan Visit

Waging External Struggle through Law: China’s Emerging Domestic Legal Capacity and its Legal Response to Nancy Pelosi’s Taiwan Visit

THE CORRELATION BETWEEN NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL LEGISLATION ON FREEDOM OF RELIGION: INTERACTION ISSUES

Relevance. Issues of discussion of international and national law have acquired particular relevance in the light of constitutional changes, occurred in 2020 in the Russian Federation. The primacy of national law, enshrined at the level of the Constitution of the Russian Federation, has significantly changed the interaction between the national and international legal order. At the same time, the sphere of freedom of conscience (religion) is one of the most important areas of legal regulation, which has both national and international legal aspects, which determines the relevance of the chosen research goal. The Purpose of the study is to analyze international legal and domestic regulation in the sphere of ensuring the right to freedom of conscience (religion), as well as to identify and resolve urgent problems of interaction of systemic law in the context of the right to freedom of conscience. The research objectives are: 1) determination of the place of the right to freedom of conscience (religion) in the system of international and national legal regulation, in particular, analysis of the concepts of “absolute law”, “jus cogens”, “general international law”; 2) consideration of the issue of the boundaries of freedom of religion in the understanding of the national law of the Russian Federation and international law. As a result of the accomplishment of the task, it is proposed to identify the main differences in this issue between the domestic and international legal order, as well as to put forward proposals to eliminate this discrepancy. Methodology. The key tool was the method of comparative analysis, as well as system analysis. In the course of the study, the main acts of the current legislation of the Russian Federation in the field, the most important international legal acts, the works of prominent specialists in international and constitutional rights were analyzed, a study of law enforcement acts (the practice of the courts of the Russian Federation, the European Court of Human Rights) was carried out. Conclusions. As a result, original conclusions were obtained regarding the need for the doctrinal inclusion of norms on freedom of conscience (religion) in the system of international common law. The conclusion is made about the need for a more complete consideration of the position of international judicial bodies in the legislative movement of the boundaries of the right to freedom of conscience (religion).

Recognition of Transgender Community in Domestic Legal Regime: A Comparative Analysis between Sri Lanka and India

Transgender is an Umbrella term to define the people whose gender identity and gender expression differ from their gender assign at birth. At present, the concept of transgender has acquired a great attention in the western world and the number of territories legally validate the transgender community and their rights through national legislations. Concerning South Asian context, the third gender concept is recognized by the Indian Supreme Court but unfortunately, the legal system of Sri Lanka is reluctant to amend the laws to ameliorate the position of the transgender community. This research mainly focused on transgender identity and the laws relating to the transgender community in Sri Lanka and India. The purpose of the research is to examine the existing laws relating to transgender identity in both countries. Moreover, this piece of work tries to identify the contribution of law in improving the position of the transgender community in these territories. Further, this work mainly used the comparative research method and based on internet retrieved documents. Through this work it suggests and identifies the ways and means to improve the condition of Sri Lankan transgender community. Recommendations will be made in this respect. Keywords: transgender community, third gender, legal system, legal recognition, society

The Criminalization of War Crimes in Italy and the Shortcomings of the Domestic Legal Framework

Abstract The Italian domestic legal framework related to war crimes is characterised by several shortcomings. It is still largely centred on the provisions present in the 1941 wartime military criminal code, which have not been subjected to substantial legal restyling, regardless of the explicit and implicit obligations of domestic criminalization inferred from treaties ratified by Italy. Only in 2001–2002, at the time of Italian military operations in Afghanistan, were certain amendments to this code introduced, in order to partly adapt its content to current rules of international humanitarian law and international criminal law. However, such solutions have not brought about effective harmonization and were drafted within an incoherent legal framework, made even more complex by subsequent reforms addressing military missions abroad, thus resulting in the current unsatisfactory scenario which would require substantive reforms.

Growing New Wings: The Rise Of International Arbitration In Japan

This article considers the growing trend for Japanese entities to select international arbitration as the primary means for resolving international business disputes. In particular, this paper focuses on the following four factors which it identifies as being significant drivers behind this trend: (1) increasing maturity of Japanese parties in terms of their arbitration experience; (2) a growth in awareness of arbitration associated the rapid expansion of Japan’s investment treaty programme; (3) the establishment of a locally based arbitration talent pool, and (4) improvements in the domestic legal, educational and physical infrastructure for arbitrations seated in Japan. Japan, international arbitration, investment treaty arbitration, market growth, legal infrastructure, statistics.

Rank of Incorporated Human Rights Treaty in the Domestic Legal System of Ethiopia

The interplay between domestic and international law depicts a structural dependence of the latter on the former for its domestic implementation. International law recognizes a state to determine manner and means of incorporating international treaties into domestic laws. On the other hand when it comes to the substantive relationship between international law and domestic law the rules of international law dictate the hierarchically higher status of the international norm. Contrary to such facts, the emergent consensus of the dominant literature on the rank of human rights treaties in Ethiopia follows the mistaken approach which allows domestic law to determine the position of treaties at the national level. This article aims to rebut such mistaken approach by presenting three evidences from international law which prove the hierarchically higher status of ratified human rights treaties within the Ethiopian domestic legal system: the nature of obligation imposed by human rights treaties, the principle of pacta sunt servanda, and the principle of consistent interpretation. The author concludes that ratified human rights treaties occupy a position superior to that of Ethiopian constitution and other laws, which, if inconsistent with ratified treaties, should give way to the domestic application of treaty-provisions. Keywords: International law, domestic law, rank, incorporation, human rights, treaties DOI: 10.7176/DCS/11-1-04 Publication date: January 31 st 2021

Analysis of the Present Condition of Garment Workers’ Rights and Its Protection under Domestic and International Legal Framework: Bangladesh Perspective

Total economy of Bangladesh greatly depends on industrial sectors and the ready-made garment is a vital part of this sector. More than 4 million people are working in this sector and about 5000 garment factories are scattered across the country. Among them about 70 per cent workers are women and they work equally with men from early morning to evening, which often extends to several hours at night, where their paid wages which they actually got are not in a satisfactory level. But we have to admit that, Proper management of labour is an essential matter for the growth of the industrial sector and for that role of labour and industrial laws are of paramount importance. The main object to which the Labour law indicates is obviously to maintain peace in the industrial sector and to meet the vibrancies of problems in the workplace, not only that but also to protect and secure the essential rights of the workmen. But it is a matter to regret that various defects, loopholes and unwanted rules of labour laws are depriving the workers of their legal or basic rights and also indiscriminately been victimized. The main aims of this research are to clarify the rights and other conceptual issues regarding rights of the workers especially who work in the garments sector of Bangladesh in accordance with standard practice, domestic and international legal framework along with the pledge to search the main and top most loopholes of existing labour laws of our country. In this research, we have tried both qualitative and quantitative approach to make it more effective and fruitful. At the end of this research, we will try to discuss some international documents to assure the maximization of rights of the working class as well as to lessen the violation of their fundamental, legal or basic rights in the ready-made garments sector of our country.

The chase for legal timber: Developments in the commercial trade of timber in Ghana

The quest for timber and timber resources and its corollary effects on forest degradation has in the last decade contributed to a series of concerted local and international interventions aimed at addressing the situation. These interventions have taken the character of domestic policies, international agreements and pacts and to some extent, domestic legislative reforms. The plethora of interventions have created a horde of laws and agreements with varying scopes and applications, multiple institutions with interlocked and overlapping responsibilities and uncoordinated and often undocumented practice in the commercial trade of timber. The focus of this article is to prod through the domestic and international legal and institutional architecture on the regulation of the trade of timber and timber resources. The article hopes to unearth the challenges in complying with these obligations and propose recommendations on the way forward.

Legal status of biomedintellectproduct classification mutation

The multifaceted nature of the content of biotechnology has turned a science that studies the possibilities of using living orga -nisms, their systems or their vital products to solve technological problems, as well as the possibility of creating living organisms with the necessary properties by genetic engineering, into one of the areas of industry of important macroeconomic importance. In all leadingcountries of the world, national and international programs on biotechnology, funded by public and private capital, are developed andare operating, in addition, the results of scientific research in the field of biotechnology. Implement long-term projects with a highdegree of risk upon receipt of various commercial products, the development results of which must be reliably protected from competitors,possibly while ensuring the granting of exclusive rights to new products and technologies by patenting. Thus, the protection of theright to biotechnology makes the patent an instrument for transferring technology and protecting new markets in the global economy,where the use of such an instrument is most effective in industries with a high cost of research and development, but low productioncost of the final product, typical for biotechnological, microbiological and pharmaceutical industry.The article is devoted, in essence, to the legal identification of a biomedical product, its content, as an object of intellectual pro -perty. It is indicated, using the example of strains and biosimilars, on the unique individual variability of properties and the content ofbiotechnologies, which is prone to constant mutation, as objects of intellectual property, which can directly affect the protection andprotection of biopatents. Risks of the use of post-patent non-comparable biotherapeutic drugs, which are not identical to the originalbiotechnological drugs in three directions: quality, safety, efficacy, are presented in detail, as an example of the necessary legislativecontrol. Attention is drawn to the need for legal classification and the lack of clarity in the definitions of intellectual property objectsfor biotechnology in international and domestic regulatory legal acts, which negatively affect the formation of the legal status ofbiotechnologies, and are mirrored on the use of legal tools for patenting.The article presents an examination of the current classical legislation in the plane of a legal innovation model, taking intoaccount the signs of legislative default and the absence of judicial practice, with a proposal for a reset of the domestic legislative systemin the field of intellectual property on biotechnology, which is strategically very important for the state. The problems of the nationallegal system in the field of intellectual property on biotechnology are outlined, taking into account the emergence of fundamentally newobjects of intellectual property generated by transplantation, cloning and robotization, regarding the determination of the legal status ofthese objects. It is investigated that high-quality provision of protection and protection of intellectual property objects consists in thedevelopment of a relevant legislative procedure on a highly specialized competent basis, taking into account the constant dynamic andinnovative intellectual exclusivity.