This article examines UNCITRAL's draft Rules for Online Dispute Resolution (ODR) and argues that in low-value e-commerce cross-border transactions, the most effective consumer protection policy cannot be based on national laws and domestic courts, but on effective and monitored ODR processes with swift out-of-court enforceable decisions. The draft Rules propose a tiered procedure that culminates in arbitration. Yet, this procedure neither ensures out-of-court enforcement, nor does it guarantee compliance with EU consumer mandatory law. Accordingly, this article argues that the draft Rules may be inconsistent with the European approach to consumer protection.

In August 2008, Georgia instituted proceedings against the Russian Federation before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to establish its international responsibility for alleged acts of racial discrimination against the ethnic Georgian population in South Ossetia and Abkhazia by ‘the de facto South Ossetian and Abkhaz separatist authorities […] supported by the Russian Federation’. In order to establish the international responsibility of an outside power for the internationally wrongful conduct of a secessionist entity, it must be shown, inter alia, that the acts or omissions of the secessionist entity are attributable to the outside power. International tribunals usually determine the question of attribution on the basis of whether the authorities of the secessionist entity were ‘controlled’ by the outside power when performing the internationally wrongful conduct. Attribution thus becomes a question of how one defines ‘control’. The test of control of authorities and military forces of secessionist entities has become perhaps the most cited example of the fragmentation of international law. The ICJ, the Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, and the European Court of Human Rights have all developed and applied their own tests in order to establish whether a secessionist entity has been ‘controlled’ by an outside power. There is a lot of confusion about the various tests, usually referred to as the ‘effective control’, ‘overall control’ and ‘effective overall control’ tests. This article sets out the various control tests, their requirements and areas of application, and asks which test or tests should be applied to attribute the internationally wrongful conduct of a secessionist entity to an outside power.

The UNCITRAL Model Law on Procurement of Goods, Construction and Services,1 adopted in 1993/4, provides a template for reforming regulatory systems on public procurement. A decade on, UNCITRAL is now considering a review.2 This is timely for several reasons, not least because of new purchasing practices, especially in electronic procurement, and the increasing need for harmonization with other international norms. In this context, the present article offers a critical appraisal of the Model Law as a global standard for public procurement.

The purpose of this paper is to raise several significant issues for debate which concern the sentencing of offenders to be convicted in the newly established International Criminal Court (ICC). Such has been the impact of the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington that they have thrown into sharp focus critical deficiencies in the purpose, coherence and practical mechanisms developed for sentencing in the ICC.1 Not only did such events suggest a greater immediacy for the ICC, but also, more significantly, a realisation that crimes of this magnitude, loaded with so many ideological and political interests and crying out for a ‘just’ resolution, place the role of the international sentencer at the forefront of the debate.

Over the past 30 years, sub-state national societies in a number of developed liberal democracies—particularly Quebec, Catalonia, and Scotland within Canada, Spain, and the United Kingdom respectively—have both reasserted their national distinctiveness and demanded recognition of it in constitutional terms.1 This re-emergence of sub-state national sentiment within industrially advanced States, and the struggle for constitutional change which has accompanied it, are considered by many observers to be strangely incongruous at a time of economic and cultural ‘globalization’ where the power of the nation- State itself seems to be waning.2 Why do sub-state nations, the common refrain asks, seek statehood when the very concept of State sovereignty is losing its meaning? This article will argue, however, that the rise of sub-state nationalism even at a time when the resilience of State sovereignty is itself coming into question, is in fact not as paradoxical as it might at first appear, at least insofar as this process is taking place within developed democracies.3 It will be contended that the elaborate constitutional programmes which are now beingadvanced by sub-state nationalist movements for the reform of their respective host States are inmany respects informed by, and reflective of, wider transformations in the patterns of State sovereignty.

This article scrutinizes the last ten years of the academic debate on EU citizenship law taking nine fundamental disagreements among scholars as starting points. It explores EU citizenship's relationship with three groups of issues of fundamental importance, including the place of this concept within the fabric of EU law, the influence of this concept on the essence of the Union as a system of multi-level governance, and its impact on the lives of ordinary Europeans. A large number of key works which influenced the Court and the legislator in the recent years is assessed to outline the likely direction of future research, as well as EU citizenship's future development. Although the literature on the subject is overwhelmingly rich and diverse, this article aspires to provide a representative sample of issues of interest for the framing of the concept at issue from a supranational perspective, necessarily leaving national literatures aside.

Within common law systems a body of jurisprudence has developed according to which indigenous peoples' land rights have been recognized based upon historical patterns of use and occupancy and corresponding traditional land tenure. Looking at the emerging common law doctrine on aboriginal or native title, this article examines how legal institutions are building a theory on historical land claims through the recognition of indigenous laws deriving from prior occupation. The article analyses how the common law doctrine builds a bridge between past events and contemporary land claims. The aim of this article is to examine to what extent the common law doctrine proposes a potential model for the development of a legal theory on the issue of indigenous peoples' historical land claims. In doing so the article analyses how the common law doctrine compares with international law when dealing with historical arguments by focusing on issues of intertemporal law and extinguishment.

The issue of religious dress, specifically female Muslim religious dress, has been the subject of intense controversy within Europe over recent years. In the United Kingdom comments by Jack Straw MP, Leader of the House of Commons and a former Home and Foreign Secretary, that he felt uncomfortable talking to women at his constituency surgery who wore the Muslim veil sparked a storm of intense and, at times, acrimonious debate.1 In France the banning of headscarves in State schools has provoked major controversy.2 In the Netherlands the Dutch Parliament voted to ban the burka in public places3 and in five Belgian towns its wearing has been banned on pain of a fine.4

The principle of non-discrimination constitutes a corner-stone in different fields of international economic law, notably international trade in goods and services as well as intellectual property and investment protection. While its basic rationale appears to be straightforward, the application of the different legal elements which constitute a non-discrimination obligation has proven to be most challenging. Adjudicating bodies have been applying different interpretations and standards with regard to the legal elements of ‘less favourable treatment’, ‘likeness’ and ‘regulatory purpose’, which leads to a high fragmentation of the non-discrimination principle in international economic law. This article maps out the different theories for each of these elements on the examples of WTO law, NAFTA, bilateral investment treaties (BIT) and EU law and analyses how these theories affect the scope and liberalizing effect of the non-discrimination obligation. The article then attempts to develop a coherent factor-based application of non-discrimination rules suitable for all fields of international economic law. The article submits the theory that the elements of non-discrimination should not be applied as strict legal conditions which must be proven by a complainant, but as a range of factors which are weighed and balanced by the adjudicating bodies.

Melding the power of the state with the power of capitalism, state-owned and state-controlled enterprises continue to control the commanding heights of the Chinese economy even though market-oriented reforms have led to a rapid expansion of the private sector in China. This article reflects on how China's practice of state capitalism challenges the world trading system and how WTO law, as interpreted by WTO Panels and the WTO Appellate Body (AB), addresses these challenges. The article concludes that the WTO Agreement on Subsides and Countervailing Measures (SCM Agreement) has been interpreted in such a manner that many key features of China's state capitalism could easily be challenged by its trading partners in a WTO-consistent manner. This finding has profound implications for China's domestic economic reforms, especially China's ongoing reforms of its state-owned enterprises and commercial banks.

Since the outset of the financial crisis, the EU financial markets regime1 has been undergoing a period of turbulence which contrasts sharply with the period of relative stability which it briefly enjoyed over 2005–2007 and post-FSAP (Financial Services Action Plan2). The FSAP reforms had been adopted. The Committee of European Securities Regulators (CESR) had emerged as an influential actor, driving some degree of supervisory coordination and co-operation and constructing a significant soft law ‘rule-book.’ And the 2007 Lamfalussy Review suggested broad political, institutional and stakeholder satisfaction with the Lamfalussy process. There was little enthusiasm for grand adventures in institutional design, albeit that supervision, an institutionally-driven concern, was presciently if belatedly emerging as a concern of the EU institutions. The Review's main concern, however, was with strengthening the pragmatic, if somewhat haphazard, network-based, ‘supervisory convergence’ model as the means for supervising the integrating EU financial market. With respect to regulation, reflecting the wider international zeitgeist pre-crisis,3 ‘Better Regulation’ and the need for a ‘regulatory pause’ were the watchwords of a Commission which, once the massive FSAP regime was safely in place, espoused the benefits of self-regulation and highlighted the risks of intervention without impact assessment, extensive consultation and evidence of market failure.4 This was most apparent with respect to credit rating agencies,5 debt market transparency,6 hedge funds,7 and clearing and settlement.8 Institutionally, a relatively sophisticated law-making apparatus, in the form of the Lamfalussy structures, a plethora of advisory bodies and stakeholder bodies (notably FIN-NET which represents the consumer and SME interest), had been established.

The 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change is relevant to human rights law, not for what it says about human rights— which is next to nothing—but for what it says about the need to address the risk of climate change taking global temperatures above 1.5 or 2 °C. The Agreement could work, or it could fail by a large margin, but those who want to influence the outcome can still do so. That includes the human rights community. Since climate change is plainly a threat to human rights, how should the UN human rights institutions respond? Should they use their existing powers of oversight to focus attention on how States parties implement (or fail to implement) commitments made in the Paris Agreement? Or should they recognize a right to the enjoyment of a safe, clean, healthy and sustainable environment? Either choice would represent a significant contribution to the debate on human rights and climate change, giving humanity as a whole a voice that at present is scarcely heard.

Codification conventions and draft articles completed by the International Law Commission are often—and increasingly—invoked by courts, tribunals, governments and international organizations as ‘reflections of customary international law’. This article discusses the factors explaining the authority that these ‘non-legislative codifications’ have come to enjoy in international legal reasoning. Moving beyond the traditional explanations of codification conventions as evidence of State practice and ILC draft articles as the teaching of publicists, it considers how, against the backdrop of the uncertainty of customary international law, institutional factors (relating to authorship, representation and procedure) and textual factors (including prescriptive form and the absence of a distinction between ‘codification’ and ‘progressive development’) converge to convey the image that the resulting texts constitute the most authoritative restatement of the existing law. It then assesses this phenomenon in light of the political ideal of the international rule of law. While non-legislative codifications contribute to enhancing the clarity, consistency and congruence of international law, the fact that they may portray novel rules as reflecting existing law inevitably raises legality concerns.

In November 2001, a new weapon was added to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation's2 arsenal used to protect and preserve the world's cultural heritage, in the form of the Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage.3 This Convention, while not yet in force, will complement UNESCO's three other heritage conventions, the 1954 Hague Convention on the Protection of Cultural Heritage in the Event of Armed Conflict,4 the 1970 Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property (1971)5 and the 1972 Convention concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage.6

Can a military occupation-and all the responsibilities of an occupying power as laid down in the laws of war—end at a single moment in time, and without the actual departure of the foreign military forces involved? This is the core question posed by the planned twin events of 28 June 2004 in Iraq: (1) the assumption of full authority by the sovereign Interim Government of Iraq, and(2) the proclaimed end of the US-led occupation of Iraq that had begun during the war of March-April 2003.

There are several reasons, pertaining to both the development of a generallyapplicable framework and the elaboration of issue-specific approaches, why it is timely to reflect on whether liability regimes are an appropriate tool for international environmental protection. At the level of general norms, the International Law Commission (ILC) appears to have arrived at a crossroads, as it must decide whether and how to approach further work on liability for transboundary environmental harm. At the same time, discussions about issuespecific liability regimes have proliferated. Indeed, it seems that few multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs) can be negotiated today without running across the liability issue in one way or another. The issue often divides Southern delegations, which tend to push for the inclusion of liability regimes, and Northerndelegations, which tend to resist. But the disagreement is not just a matter of policy and politics. There is also a lively debate in the literature about the pros and cons of international liability regimes. All the more reason, therefore, to assess whether engaging in the laborious task of developing a liability regime is a good investment of scarce negotiating resources. The goals that animate the quest for environmental liability are important ones: to make polluters pay for the environmental costs of their activities, to compensate innocent victims, to protect the environment, and, in certain contexts, to protect developing countries against environmental risks. The key question is whether, given these sensibilities, the approach makes sense.