Volume 9, Issue 2

This article examines the effectiveness of International Labour Organisation Complaints (ILO) as a means to protect workers' ability to bargain collectively in the United States. It focuses, as a case study, on an ILO Committee on Freedom of Association (“CFA") report that was issued in 2007. Two years prior, in 2005, The United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (“UE") filed an ILO complaint alleging that a North Carolina statute, NCGS § 95-98, which prohibits any public entity from entering into a collective bargaining agreement with a trade union, violated international law and the United States' treaty obligations under the ILO regime. The CFA agreed and recommended that the statute be repealed.Any attempt to enforce the CFA's report (UE Report) in a U.S. district court would be fraught with obstacles. This article addresses these obstacles in turn. Part I discusses the UE Report in relation to domestic precedent upholding NCGS § 95-98 under United States constitutional law. Part II examines the legal basis of the UE Report under international law, including whether the right to bargain collectively is a preemptory norm. Part III, finally, considers the domestic enforceability of ILO treaty law and the UE Report under the U.S. Supreme Court's recent ruling in Medellín v. Texas, an immediately important transnational law decision.

The purpose of this work is to communicate some reflections on the present status of legal education, as well as the innovations on content and methodology which we consider necessary to implement for legal education, that can better contribute to achieve the goals of the Law in current times (preventing that the Law may hinder or delay the fluency and development of social and economic relationships). These appreciations have been influenced by some decades of experience teaching Civil Law (at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels), the observation of programs and methods run by some Latin American universities–and, to a lesser extent, by European and American universities–and by some essays on legal education with different tendencies.

Arab countries have adopted market economy principles and pursued policies designed to strengthen their economies. The cornerstone of Arab countries' long-term economic objectives has been to increase trade and support economic growth via regional and global integration. To this end, Arab countries are attempting to broaden their engagement in the multilateral trading system by joining the World Trade Organization (WTO). In addition, some Arab countries entered into trade arrangements with the United States (U.S.) to foster economic development, attract investment, and develop peaceful relationship. These trade agreements carry several implications for local economies.The purpose of this paper is to examine the implications of the trade agreements signed between the U.S. and Arab countries on the economic and legal regimes of the latter. The paper will proceed in two main parts. The first part analyzes the preferential trade arrangement known as "Qualifying Industrial Zones" created between the U.S on the one hand and Jordan, Israel, and Egypt on the other hand. It discusses the general rules of qualifying industrial zones program and the impact of these zones on local production and employment. The second part discusses trade agreements concluded between the U.S. and Arab countries. The emphasis will be on the U.S.-Jordan Free Trade Agreement as it is considered the template for future agreements signed between the U.S. and other Arab countries. The paper analyzes the most important provisions of the U.S.-Jordan Free Trade Agreement and their implications. Then, the paper will analyze trade agreements between the U.S. and other Arab countries. The paper argues that, while current trade programs between the U.S. and those Arab countries analyzed in the paper required difficult reforms in their domestic laws and led some negative consequence, on balance; these trade programs increased trade and created employment opportunities.

In the context of international law, “transitology" is often used to describe the literature surrounding the former Soviet Union (fSU) and the subsequent reform attempts by Western and Eastern/Central European market reformers. While it is often acknowledged there have been other “waves" of transition, this literature typically asserts that the situation in the fSU is somehow distinct in human history, and thus, to a large extent, unmixable with other past “transition" histories. Likewise, the story of the Soviet Union's dissolution, and the subsequent reforms in its aftermath, largely avoid the radar of critical colonial discourses. In short, there is almost no effort to link the fSU to the 19th century colonial project of Western European states, in particular the story of informal empire. This article seeks to re-frame the post-communist transition debate in terms of the broader international challenges of decolonization, “neo-colonialism," and informal empire building in the West, the former Soviet Union, as well as between the two in the post Soviet space.

Most developing and transition countries adopted statutes prohibiting anticompetitive agreements and abusive practices during the 1980's and 1990's. The effectiveness of these laws is nevertheless widely debated. This paper contributes to the literature by conducting an event study of the adoption of Russian competition laws in the early years of transition, the subsequent economic developments and the legislative reform process of 2002-2006. An examination of the substantive prohibitions and enforcement data reveals that Russian competition laws relied on complex standards and imposed weak constraints on anticompetitive practices. The more recent shift to simpler and more predictable per se prohibitions against collusive agreements substantiates this hypothesis. The evidence has implications for the design of regulatory regimes in other countries with laws similar to those operative in Russia during the transition process.

The idea of limited government is the key to constitutionalism in the traditional understanding of the relationship between the constitution and political power. In contrast to the traditionalist view that the constitution is aimed to constrain political power, this essay aims to explore a new understanding of constitutionalism. By way of analyzing the multiple functions of the constitution and taking up the concept of “total constitution" associated with the growing horizontal effect of constitutional rights, this essay argues that the relationship between the constitution and political power needs to be recast on complementary rather than opposing terms. The aspiration to “total constitution" in the sense of a fulfilled constitutionalism is substantiated by the omnipotent constitutional state. Taking account of constitutional omnipotence, political power is instrumental rather than antagonistic to the normative implementation of constitutionalism. Recasting the constitution as an expression of political power is the key to a new understanding of constitutionalism.

En el mundo andino el agua, los sistemas hídricos revelan aspectos dinámicos con un correlato en el poder. Tras la conquista, los españoles y criollos se apropiaron de tierras y el agua; luego, hicieron lo mismo los terratenientes en la República Criolla, e incluso en el s. XX se mantuvo el uso ilimitado del agua en favor de los hacendados y sus empresas. A partir de la primera mitad del siglo XX, se desarrollaron múltiples proyectos de irrigación, en este caso nos focalizaremos en el proyecto Choclococha, la cual permite irrigar el valle de Ica, beneficiando a los pequeños y medianos agricultores, así como las agroindustrias ahí localizadas. Actualmente, existe un déficit de agua, ello motivó al Gob. Regional de Ica, a través del Proyecto Especial Tambo Ccaracocha (PETACCC), implemente el “Canal Colector Ingahuasi” (73 km) para colectar agua de las lagunas y otras fuentes de agua. A causa de esto, hoy en los albores del siglo XXI, más de 5,000 familias de comunidades campesinas de Huancavelica (Sierra central - Perú) podrían quedarse sin agua debido a la construcción del “Canal Colector Ingahuasi” que rodea el Nevado Palomo (5.188 msnm) colocando en riesgo bofedales, pastizales de siete comunidades ubicadas a lo largo del canal, las cuales poseen 146,000 cabezas de ganado (alpacas, llamas y ovinos), además de cuatro comunidades del Distrito de Ascensión, Huancavelica, que también serán impactadas sumando 199,300 cabezas de ganado. Otro aspecto que agrava la situación es la reducción notable de los glaciares alrededor de la Laguna Choclococha. En este contexto, la comunidad de Carhuancho (Prov. Huaytara, Región Huancavelica) demandó al Gobierno Central del Perú y al Gobierno Regional de Ica ante el Tribunal Latinoamericano del Agua (TLA, San José Costa Rica http://www.tragua.com/en/ ). El TLA falló a favor de la comunidad, recomendó la paralización de la obra y la indemnización correspondiente. En este texto, ofrecemos una aproximación a la comunidad articulada a partir de las siguientes interrogantes: ¿De qué manera la comunidad de Carhuancho logra articularse y movilizar un conjunto de recursos (capital social, confianza, capital cognitivo) para llevar a cabo reivindicaciones entorno al agua?, ¿Cómo este caso pone en jaque al Estado Peruano, evidenciando sus fracturas institucionales?, a partir de este caso, ¿Cómo se construye la relación entre el “bien público” y políticas sociales del Estado?, ¿Es acaso que el alejamiento del Estado legitima la reproducción de las llamadas desigualdades persistentes?.

The article offers an easy-to-use indicator for measuring whether NGOs, international organizations, and government policies and projects meet the criteria for sustained poverty reduction that reverses legacies of colonialism and that promotes self-reliant (mostly "self sufficient") autonomous development following principles that have been established by various international treaties and that are recognized by experts in the field. Use of this indicator reveals that most of the major actors in the field of development are actually providing relief rather than development and are creating dependency by treating symptoms rather than long-term solutions. The indicator points to the specific areas where they need to improve in order to fulfill sustainability criteria including tests of whether aid distorts financial markets and business competition, erodes appropriate government functions, and reverses colonial institutions and ideologies that interfere with sustainable consumption within a resource base. The article also offers a sample test of the indicator using United Nations Volunteers (UNV) as a case study.

This article aims to provide the justification for a subaltern theory of human rights. It explains the desirability of interpretative strategies that reveal the role, knowledge, contributions and sources that depict subaltern human rights perspectives. In particular, it considers the work of Boaventura de Sousa Santos, whose various writings directly or indirectly address the central issues relating to human rights from these perspectives. It subsequently explores the relationship between Santos and other protagonists, such as Upendra Baxi. These perspectives are then correlated with the view that the optimism for subaltern human rights may seem an insurmountable challenge given that this is hinged on the possibilities of a relationship with law. The justification or indeed legitimacy of subaltern views of human rights rests squarely on the degree to which such claims can be concretized into law. For instance, the state-centric nature of international human rights law is closed to initiatives that fall beyond its scope. As a consequence, the final preoccupation in this article is to propose the deconstruction of human rights into a plural discourse of its law and jurisprudence. This, to me, rests on the possibility of extrapolating a view of human rights from the notion of legal pluralism. The article is structured into the following parts. The first fleshes out an understanding of the subaltern concept. The second part locates the subaltern within the context of Santos' work on globalization; here, an attempt is made to correlate the relationship between globalization and human rights, particularly from the perspectives of the subaltern. The third part considers the loose connection of previous sections with the prospective theory of subaltern human rights and, ultimately, how legal pluralism supports this endeavor.

On January 1, 1994, the day when NAFTA entered into force, a group of indigenous appeared from the Lacandon jungle in Chiapas, occupied the city hall of San Cristóbal de las Casas, presented themselves as the Zapatista Army and announced: "We are the product of 500 years of fighting. [] But today we say: It is enough." This was the beginning of a rebellion which attracted international attention and is still going on today. Taking the announcement seriously, this article traces the history of 500 years from a legal perspective. By considering also the international dimension of this history, it shall be revealed that the reasons for the Zapatista revolt range from the Lacandon jungle through Chiapas, Mexico, Latin America, to the world and its global order. The article will focus on their demand for "land and freedom" which leads to the so-called agrarian question and the long history of bloody disputes about land, means of existence, natural resources, autonomy, sovereignty, power, dominance, oppression, life and death.The history of Mexican land law (sometimes as a legal reflection, sometimes as a result and sometimes as an origin of these disputes) shows with outstanding clarity international structures of hegemony. Foreign influence and legal transfer in accordance with European and U.S. economic interest have been shaping this area of law since colonization. On the other hand, history also gave birth to strong counter-hegemonic movements: the Mexican Revolution at the beginning of the 20th century and today the Zapatista rebellion.The objective of the article is the following: By putting the Zapatista struggle for land in the historical and global context, their “anti-systemic" or “postcolonial" quality shall be revealed. Against this background, the legal analysis of their rebellion shall be used to develop cornerstones of a postcolonial legal perspective. Hence, independent from the chronological order, the theoretical starting point is January 1, 1994. History will be approached as a memory that flashes on this day in the moment of uprising.