Suchergebnisse

To determine what legal instruments need to be formulated and institutions created to manage a global commons, it is first necessary to investigate the various functions that the proposed management regime or regimes are to carry out. This article considers what functions might be assigned to an international regime to manage the threat of climatic change resulting from the "greenhouse effect. " It then examines what instruments would be required to initiate the regime and what other instruments it may be expected to create as well as what institutions would be required to carry out the various processes. These requirements in terms of legal instruments and institutions would be essentially the same whether it is decided to establish a single regime to manage all global commons or, for practical or political reasons, to have separate regimes- for example, for the atmosphere, for space, for the seas, for land-based activities, and for the Antarctic.

I am pleased to have been given an opportunity to respond to Professor Barrie's arguments that the decision of the Executive Council of the Society to divest its portfolio of stocks in all corporations with investments in South Africa was both substantively misguided and legally improper.

By now everyone in the United States, certainly every lawyer, must be conscious of the tort liability crisis and the consequent liability insurance crisis. Private individuals, businesses, not-for-profit enterprises and even governmental units, from school boards to the federal Government, are finding that the damages they have to pay or their insurance costs are skyrocketing, sometimes catastrophically or even cripplingly; as a result, worthwhile events must be canceled and valuable facilities are idled. Although it may be thought that these mundane concerns cannot affect an international organization—even one, like the United Nations, based in the United States—that surely it can shelter itself with its immunity, this unfortunately is not so. Although the United Nations, like other intergovernmental organizations, does enjoy full jurisdictional immunity, based generally upon its Charter but more specifically on international treaties and even national legislation, there is somewhat less to this protection than meets the uninformed eye. Since their member states expect the organizations they establish to be good international citizens, they have prohibited them from hiding behind their functional immunity for the purpose of evading either contractor tort-related responsibilities. Indeed, they may only use their immunity in order to avoid litigation in a national court or some other inappropriate forum; but if they cannot resolve a dispute, for example with a tort claimant, they must offer some other suitable means of settling the matter, such as by arbitration.