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CONTENTS
TRIBUNA
Angelika Nussberger
Europe is famous for its comprehensive human rights protection system built up after the Second World War. It was the answer to negative features of European history such as permanent wars, authoritarian and despotic regimes and persecution of minorities. Therefore, it is considered to be constitutive for Europe’s identity. The article analyses in how far human rights can give a convincing answer to the “sins of the past”.
RES JUDICATA
INTER-AMERICAN COURT OF HUMAN RIGHTS: A REVIEW OF PRACTICE FOR 2019
Oscar Parra Vera, Edward Jesús Pérez
The submitted article presents a grasp of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights’ most important case law of 2019.
HALF-OPENING PANDORA’S BOX: REVIEW OF THE HUMAN RIGHTS COMMITTEE’S 2020 VIEW ON CLIMATE REFUGEES
Alexander Solntsev
In this article, the author aims to show the growing importance of international environmental disputes, especially the category of international climate disputes that have “splashed out” from national courts and are actively conquering international judicial and quasi-judicial institutions. The article demonstrated that the human rights treaty bodies possessing quasi-judicial powers, having evolved the basis for consideration of disputes on human rights violations in connection with climate change, have now begun to consider them directly. The View of the UN Human Rights Committee on the case of Teitiota v. New Zealand (2020) is analyzed in detail.
JUS GENTIUM
Vera Rusinova, Alaa Assaf, Daniil Moshnikov
Articulation by the USA and the United Kingdom of their position that sovereignty is not more than a general principle, which in the absence of an international custom concerning the protection of sovereignty in cyberspace cannot give rise to the international responsibility, resulted in a new spiral in the discussion on how the International law concept of sovereignty can or should be applied in cyberspace. This discussion, being known as a dispute on sovereignty as a rule or as a principle is connected with the application of a strictly positivistic discourse that is based on the lex lata provisions of International law. This article invites to break free from these frames turning to the legal-philosophical theories conceiving sovereignty on the basis of property, competences, or functions.
JUS HOMINUM
Mikhail Peterburgsky
The article is devoted to the problems of language inequality in the countries of the Americas, a view of which is carried out through the prism of the decisions of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. The author analyzes the phenomenon of linguistic discrimination (linguicism) in the diversity of its manifestations. Attention is paid to the functions and principles of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights as the central bodies for the protection of human rights in the Americas. A selection of court decisions was made based on the novelty and severity of the language conflict. Although the key subject matter of most of the cases of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights analyzed in the article was not linguistic discrimination per se, it became a separate issue for consideration by the Court, and the Court paid close attention to it. The legal positions developed by the Court are of great interest: during the trial, the Court demonstrates full involvement in the problem, refers to expert opinions of specialists — sociologists and ethnographers, who, together with valuable witness testimonies, as well as an analysis of the national and international regulatory framework, allow us to develop an understanding of the peculiarities of the linguistic rights of small ethnic communities of Latin American states, as well as an understanding of the legal regulation of the status of various languages by respondent states.
Tigran Oganesian
This article is devoted to the analysis of the conditions of transportation of prisoners described in fiction and in the pilot judgment of the ECHR in the case Tomov and Others v. Russia. The article contains memoirs and essays by several writers on the conditions of staging in the so-called Stolypin carriage. In the course of comparative analysis, the author emphasizes that the description of vagonzak (prisoner transfer vehicle) in the literature and the ECtHR rulings do not differ much, since the Stolypin carriages are still not adapted for transporting prisoners in proper conditions. In this regard, the identified structural problem requires not only the revision of domestic standards but also the replacement of the vehicle fleet with new vehicles that meet European standards. The author examines the issue of terminology for the transport of prisoners used in Russian legislation and the ECtHR in this judgment. The article analyzes the case-law of the ECtHR related to the conditions of transportation of prisoners in the context of article 3 of the Convention, as well as the structural problem itself.
JUS COMMUNE
Nikolay Kazantsev
It is the Eurasian Economic Commission (EEC) responsibility to monitor the implementation of international treaties. This duty consists of identifying the violations of treaties committed by the Union member states and restoring the rights violated. On 11 October 2018, the Court of the Union in the judgment in the case of “Oil Marin Group” (RF) v. Commission, demanded from the Commission (EEC) to carry out this duty fully, protecting the legitimate interests of the economic entity from the fiscal arbitrariness of public authority. The Court of the Union by this judgment for the first time towered over and constricted the Russian traditional orb holdern law priority of а fiscal interests and freedom of public power and decided the case in favor of legitimate private interest and protection of it by the Commission as the public authority of the Union.
LEX MERCATORIA
MANUS MANUM LAVAT: CAN CORRUPTION BE CONSIDERED A STATE-IMPOSED TRADE BARRIER?
Vladimir Trofimchuk
The article is available for free download
The article examines a tendency to broaden the scope of the “trade barrier” definition in international trade law via inclusion of anti-corruption provisions. Currently free trade agreements of the third generation (meaning the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement and post-TPP treaties) tend to incorporate provisions entailing certain anti-corruption obligations for state parties of such free trade agreements within the framework of their international trade law responsibility. Supporters of such inclusions argue that corruption directly correlates with the level of investment and trade attractiveness of a state. Accordingly, corruption can be regarded as a trade barrier imposed by a state on its own behalf (“publicly”), which in turn raises the issue of the state’s responsibility for imposing such barriers. In order to examine this issue, the article examines the currently applied anti-corruption standard in international law, including the law of the World Trade Organization.