Ratification Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

The issue of US ratification of international environmental treaties is a recurring obstacle for environmental multilateralism, including the climate regime. Despite the perceived importance of the role of the US to the success of any future international climate agreement, there has been little direct coverage in terms of how an effective agreement can specifically address US legal participation. This paper explores potential ways of allowing for US legal participation in an effective climate treaty. Possible routes forward include the use of domestic legislation such as section 115 (S115) of the Clean Air Act (CAA), and the use of sole-executive agreements, instead of Senate ratification. Legal participation from the US through sole-executive agreements is possible if the international architecture is designed to allow for their use. Architectural elements such as varying legality and participation across an agreement (variable geometry) could allow for the use of sole-executive agreements. Two broader models for a 2015 agreement with legal participation through sole-executive agreements are constructed based upon these options: a modified pledge and review system and a form of variable geometry composed of number of opt-out, voting based protocols on specific issues accompanied with bilateral agreements on mitigation commitments with other major emitters through the use of S115 and sole-executive agreements under the Montreal Protocol and Chicago Convention (Critical Mass Governance). While there is no single solution, Critical Mass Governance appears to provide the optimum combination of tools to effectively allow for US legal participation whilst ensuring an effective treaty.

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- International Relations, Climate Change, International Law, Climate change policy

The concept of human rights has developed during the last 60 years mainly through multilateral treaties as a positivist branch of public international law. However, key positivist doctrines such as pacta sunt servanda or state sovereignty pose significant obstacles to the effective realization of a modern human rights regime. The universal, inherent and inalienable nature of fundamental human rights, deriving from their natural law origins, are often set aside by such doctrines and annulled. Through close examination of reservations to human rights treaties, this study sheds new light on the deep interplay of naturalistic and legal positivist doctrines on the progress and implementation of human rights law (CEDAW, HR Committee, ILC). It is argued that the positions of apex human rights bodies regarding reservations reveal that establishing a human rights concept within a legal positivist environment, without a systematic methodological foundation, endangers its basic sustainability.

- by Despoina Glarou
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- International Relations, Ethics, Human Rights, International organizations

The doctrine of implied amendment allows that amendments to the Constitution be adopted outside of the constraints of the formal constitutional amendability procedure. Having endorsed the doctrine during the lifetime of the 1922 Constitution, the Irish courts after 1937 had unambiguously rejected it, for the 'scant respect' it showed for the Constitution as superior law as well as the 'practical disadvantage' that it made the Constitution unknowable. Nevertheless, this article argues that the doctrine of implied amendment has been enjoying an unremarked revival in the context of the ratification of European and international treaties, the beginnings of which can be seen in the Crotty decision, then traced through McGimpsey, and are now magnified by the sweeping Pringle decision. In Crotty, the Supreme Court judges not only measured the Single European Act for compatibility with the Constitution – employing a test of constitutional consistency – but they also endorsed the 'essential scope and objectives' test – a test of treaty comparison – which compared the SEA for how different it was from the Treaties of Rome. The basic feature of a test of treaty comparison is, simply, that it examines the treaty in question by reference to another treaty in order to assess whether or not it requires a constitutional amendment. Tests of treaty comparison have since been deployed in both the McGimpsey and Pringle decisions, although the indices of comparison vary widely between judgments. In Pringle, for example, the majority judges seemed to recognise no less than nine new indices by which the test of treaty comparison can be applied. These range from whether future policy-making power of the State is involved to whether foreign policy as a whole is affected; from whether the treaty is abstract or concrete to whether it has a single purpose or multiple purposes. Consideration of the consistency and congruence of these indices is for another paper; here, the point is that the test of treaty comparison, in principle, allows that amendments to the Constitution can slip through the net because treaties are being measured for the similitude with other treaties without regard to their impact on constitutional provisions. This current application of the doctrine of implied amendment in the context of treaty ratification is, it is suggested, certainly no less troubling than its historical use. The more legally defensible option, which avoids the known dangers of the doctrine of implied amendment, is, as the dissentient in Pringle has done, to assess any treaty by reference to the provisions of the Constitution using the test of constitutional consistency.

- by Maria C Cahill
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- Constitutional Law, European integration, European Law, Ireland

This essay investigates the anti-democratic rhetoric of The Federalist. In The Federalist, politics is imagined via the medical logics of the eighteenth century. For Publius, democracy is an incitement to factions and incubator of disease because it requires citizens to gather in deliberative “public bodies.” In describing democratic “disease,” The Federalist claims that the body politic is always already a threat to itself, and frames the role of governance as the management of the emergence of those threats. In so doing, The Federalist forwards an early American rhetoric of misodemia—the hatred of democracy.

- by Jeremy Engels
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- History, American History, Cultural Studies, Political Philosophy

World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (the FCTC) was adopted on 21st May 2003 and came into force on 25 th February 2005. Since its adoption, Indonesia has never signed and ratified this Convention. Currently, Indonesia is the fifth largest tobacco market in the world and the third largest cigarrete consumer (WHO data in 2008), thus it is obligatory for Indonesia to obey the minimum standards of tobacco control under the FCTC. There are two problem formulations that will be answered by this writing: first, what are the obstacles faced by Indonesia during the ratification's plan of the FCTC? Second, how far the FCTC ratification is effective in protecting public health in Indonesia? This study is normative research by using statute and comparative approaches. Indonesian policy on tobacco control always face with obstacles in the area of politic, economic, and human rights side. Most of the laws are still abstract to support public health in general. Particular researches prove that ratification efforts done by Indonesia would not cause adverse impacts to the economic advantages of tobacco but yet would be able to give effective implementation and legal certainty to protect the public health.

- by Dodik Setiawan Nur Heriyanto
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- Indonesia, The Right to Health, Tobacco control policy, FCTC

International treaties continue to remain a source in point of political animosity in United States politics. Traditional weariness in adhering to a grandiose legal system delay necessary growth in an ever evolving world political culture. United Nation conventions are created by states, for states, to address important transnational and global problems throughout the world. Human rights treaties, being the most controversial to the U.S., are perceived to reprehend civil rights. Numeral human rights treaties linger in Senate for years upon years waiting to be place in action in providing pristine moral examples to the world. The United State’s lack of ratification and decisional inaction for the matter of various U.N. human rights treaty conventions hurts vital moral foreign policy from the notionally outdated, rooted thought comprises of sovereignty, lacerating trepidation of countering the U.S. constitution and its federalism, and the preconceived lack of trust in the enforceability of abstract international treaty law. It’s time for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to take forceful action in human rights treaty ratification.

- by Alicia Fawcett
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- International Relations, International Law, Human Rights, Transnationalism

It might seem counter-intuitive to suggest that the chasm between Europe and her citizens is partially caused by the weakening of constituent power at the national level. Nonetheless, this article contends that the strength of ever closer union depends partly on the resilience of national constituent power. An insight recovered from French constitutional theory – that respect for constituent power is closely related to respect for limits on the power of amendment – is used as a measure of this resilience. Upon examination of judicial decisions in Germany and Spain in which enumerated substantive limits on the power of amendment have not been satisfactorily enforced, and others in Ireland and France in which the existence of essential limits on the power of amendment has been flatly denied, this article concludes that by debilitating national constituent power, treaty ratifications are ironically creating ever closer remoteness between the peoples of Europe.

- by Igor Khripunov
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- Nuclear Terrorism, IAEA, Treaty Compliance, Ratification

For some of those who support the Lisbon Treaty, it is difficult to accept that a 53% majority of the 53% voting electorate of a country of a population of 4.4 million should, by voting to reject ratification of the Treaty, single-handedly bring to a halt a process which involves 27 countries with a combined population of almost 500 million. Fundamentally, this objection misses the distinction between the use of direct democracy or popular referendum as a stand-alone procedure for political decision-making, and the use of direct democracy or popular referendum as a constitutional amendability procedure in a functioning constitutional democracy. This blindness to the significance of the referendum is perhaps most obvious after the treaty rejection, when the political emphasis is firmly focussed on the reasons for the ‘no’ vote and on what can be done to satisfy or to mitigate the concerns raised by those reasons in order to solve the political crisis that the referendum rejection has created. This analysis often seems to miss the fact that this is not just a political crisis, but rather a constitutional crisis in which both the constitutional credibility of the Irish constitutional order and the constitutional credibility of the (putative) European constitutional order are at stake. What is needed, instead, is a deeper understanding not only of the reasons for and the significance of the ‘no’ vote, but a deeper understanding of the reasons for and the significance of the referendum itself. It is the decision to hold the referendum, rather than the decision to reject the Treaty, which needs to be defended and vindicated with greater urgency because when we truly get to grips with the constitutional significance of the referendum itself we realise that the implications of this latest ‘referendum rejection crisis’ will endure long after something is done to ‘fix’ the Irish result.

The paper studies two existing alternatives: 1) ratification and 2) non-ratification (status quo) of the protocol. The ratification alternative is studied comprehensively from the point of view of the possible ratification options.
The alternatives (ratification or status-quo) are evaluated against the two objectives: a) contribution to the respect and practice of human rights in Moldova and b) overall maximization of the benefits of the society as well as the creation of the added social value. Based on these considerations, the paper draws the conclusion on the ratification of the Protocol.

- by Sergiu Ostaf
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- Human Rights Law, Human Rights, Moldova, Bill of Rights

By presenting a review of the main historiographical trends on the funding era, the essay discusses the role of the opposition to the adoption of the Constitution of the United States. More specifically, the essay traces a historiographical continuity betwe- en federalists’ arguments during the debate on the ratification of the Constitution, 1787-1788, and the subsequent definition of a standard reading of the funding era. By briefly illustrating some important historical narratives in the nineteenth and twen- tieth century, the author suggests that the scholarly rediscovery of the anti-federalists arguments has paved the way for a new light on the same. The author further sug- gests that the conflicting historic and historiographical role of antifederalism has to be considered, together with the more recent historiography on State formation and capitalist development, in order to grasp a better understanding of the State for- mation in the United States, the role of the introduction of the Constitution and its political discourse.

- by Giorgio Grappi
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- American History, Federalism, United States History, Constitutionalism

Nota: las afirmaciones realizadas en el presente documento sobre la no firma o no ratificación por parte de la República Dominicana de los tratados mencionados a continuación, están actualizadas hasta el día 27 de Marzo del 2017. Por lo tanto, se recomienda verificar periódicamente si la República Dominicana ha modificado su estatus de Estado no signatario de dichos tratados.

- by Steven Sekirya Serumaga -Zake
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- Economics, Human Rights, Uganda, Ratification

Both Federalists and Antifederalists agreed on the need to strengthen the Union against threats from without and disunion from within. The Federalists, nonetheless, spent much time defending the Union and attacking their opponents as disunionists. The Federalists won because they succeeded in shifting the issue from the questionable necessity of immediate and unamended ratification of their proposed reforms to the vital security necessity of continuation of the Union, on which their opponents in fact agreed.

- by Michael Kochin
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- American History, Diplomatic History, Law, Constitutional Law

Legal opinion on the ratification of the Common Aviation Area Agreement between the European Union and its Member States, of the one part, and the Republic of Moldova, of the other part (Sejm Paper No. 1309): The author, following an analysis of the above‑mentioned Agreement, claims that Article 10 thereof, containing taxation
provisions, meets the requirements of Article 89 (1) (5) of the Constitution. In his view, the Agreement should be ratified upon prior consent granted by statute, which means that the procedure for its ratification proposed by the Council of Ministers (on the basis of Article 89(2)) is improper.

- by Tomasz Jaroszyński
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- Constitutional Law, International Law, Polish law, Ratification
- by RAHMADINA BELLA MAHMUDA
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- Tobacco Control, Ratification
- by Ramona Coman
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- Ratification, Traité Constitutionnel

In what follows, I present a combination of philosophical and political perspectives on human rights and the establishment of an international criminal court. I present the United States’ pragmatic objections to establishing an international criminal court. Contrary to the United States’ pragmatic objections, I argue in favor of an international criminal court. Ultimately, I attempt to illustrate that the international criminal court will have protective measures designed to prevent political abuses of justice. When working properly, these protective measures will satisfy the U.S.’s pragmatic concerns. Thus, I conclude, the U.S. ought not abandon its longer history of supporting the establishment of an international criminal court.

- by Eric Smaw
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- Law, International Relations, International Law, Human Rights

Contributors List of Abbreviations PART I Chapter 1: Overview, Jonathan Todres, Mark E. Wojcik & Cris R. Revaz Chapter 2: An Introduction to the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, Cris R. Revaz Chapter 3: Analyzing the Opposition to U.S. ratification of the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, Jonathan Todres Chapter 4: The Effect of U.S. Ratification as a "Self-Executing" or as a "Non-Self-Executing" Treaty, Linda A. Malone Chapter 5: The Family-Supportive Nature of the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, Barbara Bennett Woodhouse Chapter 6: The Changing Status of the Child, Barbara Bennett Woodhouse Chapter 7: Beyond Other Treaties: The U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Value of a "Dedicated Line", Merle H. Weiner Chapter 8: U.S. Ratification of the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child: Federalism Issues, Cathy L. Nelson PART II Chapter 9: Anti-Discrimination Guarantees Under the U.N. Convention on the Ri...

- by Cris Revaz
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- Law, Human Rights Law, International Law, Political Science