Volume 9, Issue 1

Passports are examined only occasionally in legal literature, such as by Professor Reale in 1931 and by Professor Jaffe in 1956. It is time once again to conduct an examination.During the latter part of the nineteenth century, official hindrance of international travel was at its ebb. With the advent of World War I, passports were required. There was some relaxation of passport requirements after that war, but they reemerged with the advent of World War II. Passport requirements remained after that war ended. Termination of the Cold War did not cause a reduction of passport requirements.Not solely in consequence of the Islamic War, the ``passport question'' (Professor Reale's phrase) and the ``passport problem'' (Professor Jaffe's phrase) are still with us.In an ideal world, the only criteria for issuance of a passport and for retention of an issued passport would be identity and nationality. That is, an applicant for a passport would have to prove only who he is and his political relationship with the issuing country in order to qualify for a passport. A person who holds a passport would only have to not lose his nationality in order to retain his passport.Reality, in the twenty-first century, is otherwise. Countries perceive passports as having the ``real purpose[s]'' (Professor Reale's phrase) of travel control and social control. Even in relatively-free countries, passport issuance is deniable not only for inability to prove identity or nationality, and passport retention is terminable not only for loss of nationality. Grounds for denial or termination include a default on a monetary obligation to an issuing government, a failure to pay child support, being the subject of an arrest warrant, being a minor about whom there is a custody dispute, engaging in activities contrary to national security or foreign policy, and being a convicted football hooligan.There will not be abolition of passports, as Professor Reale favored. Passports will be instruments of social control, as Professor Jaffe favored. Despite reality, people with obligations of permanent allegiance to a government will continue to be denominated ``citizens.'' There will be few freemen; most people will be serfs or villeins. A freeman will obtain a passport effortlessly. A serf or villein who wants a passport will just have to keep his nose clean.

The present work deals with the implementation of Principle 10 of the Rio Declaration in the Republic of Cuba. It analyzes to what extent the presence of this principle in the Cuban legal system, including the Constitution which was reformed in 1993, is adequate in relation to the Rio Convention. The principal instruments of Cuban environmental management, such as the National Environmental Strategy, the National Program for Environment and Development, the Law on the Environment and other legal instruments are analyzed at the same time in order to determine very clearly the presence, or absence, therein of Principle 10 as established in the Rio Declaration.

While insider trading laws are certainly desirable, there is a risk that such laws may be overreaching. When a potential for overreaching rules exists, regulators should focus on the substance of a particular transaction and strike a balance between prohibiting activities which are based on non-public inside information, while permitting activities which, arguably, are not. However, finding the right balance between activities which should be permitted and activities which should be qualified as "insider trading" is not always a straightforward activity and regulators should be particularly aware of the potential adverse consequences and abuses that poorly drafted rules may cause.This paper identifies an interesting example of this type of situation which can be derived from the current United States regulation, Rule 10b5-1(c) and argues that, in light of the generally recognized American and international principles of insider trading, the SEC should revisit Rule 10b5-1(c) to limit possible insider trading abuses. In addition, it highlights possible proposals that the Commission ought to take into consideration.

In this paper, after briefly explaining how constitutional dialogue works and has been elaborated for the most part, and the way in which it is encouraged and made possible by some institutional characters of the judiciary, a specific issue will be addressed: the link between the courts' position toward this practice and the different kinds of legitimation that they refer to, democracy or constitutionalism. Legitimacy may be based more on democracy, with the idea that national sovereignty is its almost exclusive source, or on the idea that, in matters of rights, universal standards may or have to pass through different democracies. Of course we usually speak of "constitutional democracies," thereby reconciling the potential opposition between the two aspects. However, globalization, with its challenges to national sovereignty, is strengthening that opposition, and pushing it toward the one or the other aspect. Thus, courts and especially constitutional courts become the place for decision-making on the ambivalence between the risk of de-nationalizing national constitutional law and the opportunity to take part in the creation of new cosmopolitan forms of law and universalization of constitutional protection for fundamental and human rights. Two possible answers to such ambivalence will be highlighted by focusing particularly on the example of two national constitutional courts, that of South Africa and that of the United States, starting from their different attitudes towards involvement in constitutional dialogue. Their different, even opposite ways of approaching transnational dialogue, lead to paradoxical results.

When Asia was the world, diplomats, adventurers, missionaries and lawyers traveled to the West and wrote about their experiences. Three examples from India, Egypt, and Tanzania illustrate what the rest think about western law - its legitimacy, its arbitrary nature, access and availability, and legacy.

How to institutionalize human rights correctly under conditions of globalization? Through establishing autonomous powerful institutions the states of the conflict-ridden European continent have domesticated international relations among themselves. However, juridification and executive dominance prevails and the lingering question is whether the ensuing order can be legitimate. This is examined with regard to the recent attempts to bring basic rights and democracy to bear on the European Union. Neither the Charter nor the Constitutional Convention indicated that the EU would develop into a democratic state. The EU is not a nation, nor is it a state. Rather it can be seen as a regional cosmopolitan entity. The multilevel constellation that makes up the EU can amount to a governmental structure in which supranational authorities monitor the conduct of lower levels on the basis of a set of normative principles.