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Coordination of cross-border bankruptcies between 1870 and World War II offers a puzzling image. On the one hand, diplomats, academic lawyers, and private lobbies repeatedly tried to bring regulations closer to the ideal of unity and universality of proceedings: all parties and assets should be assembled in a single forum, governed by a single law. On the other hand, these demands were matched by repeated failures, so that territoriality, fragmentation, and thus relative economic inefficiency dominated. For example, many states adopted bankruptcy laws that were universal in design yet opposed any symmetric endeavor of their neighbors. This institutional stalemate cannot be easily traced to the resistance of shielded interest groups, such as senior creditors. I argue that the problem actually resulted from the interaction of two dimensions of sovereignty: the domestic dimension, whereby (under a liberal constitution) courts protect property rights and possibly reallocate them, as in a bankruptcy procedure; and the international dimension (i.e., the interstate political order), which determines the extent to which states will compromise their domestic prerogatives in order to commit themselves to stronger rules of cross-border cooperation. Between 1870 and 1840 it then seems that the constraints proper to the operation of coherent and trusted legal orders, at the national level, far outweigh the potential benefits more mutual opening. In contrast, the international regime that emerged after 1990 shows how greater international enfranchisement of economic agents was matched by much more fluid coordination and recognition between national jurisdictions.

The plight of the Vietnamese Boat People in Hong Kong in recent decades has brought into sharp relief the changing character of the international refugee political environment. Over the last twenty years asylum seekers from Vietnam arriving in the former colony have experienced a dramatic change in their reception, treatment and fortunes. For many academic observers, this has highlighted the problems facing the major actors, including the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), within the international refugee regime. This short article highlights this metamorphosis and illustrates that the refugee issue remains unresolved in Hong Kong despite the recent handover to Beijing. ; La situation difficile des Boat Peoples vietnamiens à Hong Kong dans les dernières décennies a jeté une lumière crue sur la caractère changeant de l'environnement politique des réfugiés internationaux. Au cours des vingt dernières années les demandeurs d'asile politique originaires du Vietnam débarquant dans l'ancienne colonie britannique ont vu la réception leur étant faite se modifier dramatiquement. Il en est autant de la façon dont on les traite et des opportunités qui leur sont allouées. Pour les observateurs du champ académique, ces faits ont mis en relief les problèmes auxquels font face les principaux intervenants, y compris le Haut Commissariat des Nations Unies pour les réfugiés, dans le cadre du régime international pour les réfugiés. Ce court article décrit cette métamorphose et illustre le fait que la question des réfugiés demeure irrésolue en dépit de la récente rétrocession de Hong Kong à la Chine.

Household access to essential energy services such as warmth, cooling, lighting, clean cooking or power for communication and appliances is increasingly considered to be vital to human development. People's decent living standards, health, well-being and social inclusion depend on affordable, reliable and high-quality access to energy, but instead, energy poverty is considered a growing concern globally. This contribution assesses how international law, European Union law and national law has so far responded to questions of universal household energy access and energy poverty. It focuses particularly on how states may regulate in favour of universal access to affordable, continuous and high-quality electricity supply, and pays additional attention to the role of private service providers and trends to recognise energy access as a human rights concern. In terms of the latter, the paper provides evidence that electricity access is increasingly couched in legal 'fundamental rights' or 'human rights'-terms, at UN-level, EU-level and in various national jurisdictions, such as Colombia, South-Africa or the Philippines.

Cette contribution propose une analyse de la première condamnation prononcée par
la Cour pénale internationale, par laquelle Thomas Lubanga Dyilo a été reconnu
coupable de crimes de guerre (de conscription et d'enrôlement d'enfants de moins de
15 ans) et condamné à 14 ans d'emprisonnement. Attendue depuis dix ans, cette
décision aurait pu être l'occasion pour la Cour pénale internationale (cpi) de
préciser son action en Afrique, notamment en clarifiant le sens des peines qu'elle
prononce. Or, les juges ont interprété le régime applicable à la fixation de la
peine, mais n'ont pas donné de véritable sens à cette dernière. Par manque de
pédagogie, cette première peine prononcée est insatisfaisante, voire
incompréhensible.

The security community concept generally inhabits a rather small niche in the study of International Relations, as the logic of community fundamentally challenges the prevailing logic of anarchy. In this article, it is argued both on ontological and theoretical grounds that the concept's intellectual heritage and depth transcends the boundaries of existing theories. In this sense, the concept of security community serves as a via media by linking different strands of International Relations theory together and by bridging various theoretical gaps. This argument will be developed in two steps. Firstly, it will be shown that the security community framework developed by Karl W Deutsch is deeply rooted in International Political Theory without belonging to one particular branch. By locating the concept in International Political Theory, an exercise that has been neglected by the security community literature; it will be secondly demonstrated that the concept of security community takes the middle ground between specific strands of International Relations theory, as these strands are ultimately based on concepts of moral philosophy.