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Jurisdiction is the legal term for the legal authority granted to a legal entity to enact justice. In federations like the United States, the concept of jurisdiction applies at multiple levels.
Conflict of laws is the set of rules or laws a jurisdiction applies to a case, transaction, or other occurrence that has connections to more than one jurisdiction. This body of law deals with three broad topics: jurisdiction, rules regarding when it is appropriate for a court to hear such a case; foreign judgments, dealing with the rules by which a court in one jurisdiction mandates compliance with a ruling of a court in another jurisdiction; and choice of law, which addresses the question of which substantive laws will be applied in such a case. These issues can arise in any private-law context, but they are especially prevalent in contract law and tort law.
Pacta sunt servanda is a brocard and a fundamental principle of law which holds that treaties or contracts are binding upon the parties that entered into the treaty or contract. It is customary international law. According to Hans Wehberg, a professor of international law, "few rules for the ordering of Society have such a deep moral and religious influence" as this principle.
A treaty is a formal, legally binding written agreement concluded by sovereign states in international law. International organizations can also be party to an international treaty.
The Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (VCLT) is an international agreement that regulates treaties among sovereign states.
A peremptory norm is a fundamental principle of international law that is accepted by the international community of states as a norm from which no derogation is permitted.
Ratification is a principal's legal confirmation of an act of its agent. In international law, ratification is the process by which a state declares its consent to be bound to a treaty. In the case of bilateral treaties, ratification is usually accomplished by exchanging the requisite instruments, and in the case of multilateral treaties, the usual procedure is for the depositary to collect the ratifications of all states, keeping all parties informed of the situation.
Legality of the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons[1996] ICJ 3 is a landmark international law case, where the International Court of Justice gave an advisory opinion stating that while the threat or use of nuclear weapons would generally be contrary to international humanitarian law, it cannot be concluded whether or not such a threat or use of nuclear weapons would be lawful in extreme circumstances where the very survival of a state would be at stake. The Court held that there is no source of international law that explicitly authorises or prohibits the threat or use of nuclear weapons but such threat or use must be in conformity with the UN Charter and principles of international humanitarian law. The Court also concluded that there was a general obligation to pursue nuclear disarmament.
Customary international law are international obligations arising from established or usual international practices, which are less formal customary expectations of behavior often unwritten as opposed to formal written treaties or conventions. Customary international law is an aspect of international law involving the principle of custom. Along with general principles of law and treaties, custom is considered by the International Court of Justice, jurists, the United Nations, and its member states to be among the primary sources of international law.
Justiciability concerns the limits upon legal issues over which a court can exercise its judicial authority. It includes, but is not limited to, the legal concept of standing, which is used to determine if the party bringing the suit is a party appropriate to establishing whether an actual adversarial issue exists. Essentially, justiciability seeks to address whether a court possesses the ability to provide adequate resolution of the dispute; where a court believes that it cannot offer such a final determination, the matter is not justiciable.
The Supreme Court of the United States has interpreted the Case or Controversy Clause of Article III of the United States Constitution as embodying two distinct limitations on exercise of judicial review: a bar on the issuance of advisory opinions, and a requirement that parties must have standing.
International law, also known as "law of nations", refers to the body of rules which regulate the conduct of sovereign states in their relations with one another. Sources of international law include treaties, international customs, general widely recognized principles of law, the decisions of national and lower courts, and scholarly writings. They are the materials and processes out of which the rules and principles regulating the international community are developed. They have been influenced by a range of political and legal theories.
The international legal system is the foundation for the conduct of international relations. It is this system that regulates state actions under international law. The principal subjects of international law are states, rather than individuals as they are under municipal law. The International Court of Justice acknowledged in the Reparation for Injuries case that types of international legal personality other than statehood could exist and that the past half century has seen a significant expansion of the subjects of international law. Apart from states, international legal personality is also possessed by international organisations and, in some circumstance, human beings. In addition, non-governmental organisations and national liberation movements have also been said to possess international legal personality.
War can heavily damage the environment, and warring countries often place operational requirements ahead of environmental concerns for the duration of the war. Some international law is designed to limit this environmental harm.
A reservation in international law is a caveat to a state's acceptance of a treaty. A reservation is defined by the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (VCLT) as:
a unilateral statement, however phrased or named, made by a State, when signing, ratifying, accepting, approving or acceding to a treaty, whereby it purports to exclude or to modify the legal effect of certain provisions of the treaty in their application to that State.
International law is the set of rules, norms, and standards that states and other actors feel an obligation to obey in their mutual relations and generally do obey. In internation relations, actors are simply the individuals and collective entities, such as states and international organizations, which can make behavioral choices, whether lawful or unlawful. Rules are formal, often written expectations for behavior and norms are less formal, customary expectations about appropriate behavior that are frequently unwritten. It establishes norms for states across a broad range of domains, including war and diplomacy, economic relations, and human rights.
The primacy of European Union law is a legal principle establishing precedence of European Union law over conflicting national laws of EU member states.
The Treaty Clause of the United States Constitution establishes the procedure for ratifying international agreements. It empowers the President as the primary negotiator of agreements between the United States and other countries, and holds that the advice and consent of a two-thirds supermajority of the Senate renders a treaty binding with the force of federal law.
Medellín v. Texas, 552 U.S. 491 (2008), was a decision of the United States Supreme Court that held even when a treaty constitutes an international commitment, it is not binding domestic law unless it has been implemented by an act of the U.S. Congress or contains language expressing that it is "self-executing" upon ratification. The Court also ruled that decisions of the International Court of Justice are not binding upon the U.S. and, like treaties, cannot be enforced by the president without authority from Congress or the U.S. Constitution.
The Supremacy Clause of the Constitution of the United States establishes that the Constitution, federal laws made pursuant to it, and treaties made under its authority, constitute the "supreme Law of the Land", and thus take priority over any conflicting state laws. It provides that state courts are bound by, and state constitutions subordinate to, the supreme law. However, federal statutes and treaties must be within the parameters of the Constitution; that is, they must be pursuant to the federal government's enumerated powers, and not violate other constitutional limits on federal power, such as the Bill of Rights—of particular interest is the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which states that the federal government has only those powers that are delegated to it by the Constitution. It is the responsibility of the United States Supreme Court in that case to exercise the power of judicial review: the ability to invalidate a statute for violating a provision of the Constitution.
References
- ↑ Reparation for Injuries Suffered in the Service of the United Nations , Advisory Opinion, I.C.J. Rep. 1949 (Apr. 11), p. 174.
- ↑ Article 117 (I) of the Constitution of Mexico
- ↑ Article 167 of the Constitution of Belgium
