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The meanings of legal textual objects, such as laws, legal principles, concepts, and judgments, change over time. New meanings are proposed by legislators, courts, lawyers, and other legal actors, and are then argued over in courts. In this article, based on my 2011 Master's thesis, I discuss some of the different meanings proposed for conciliation1 in the context of international commercial dispute resolution. On the basis of contemporary legislative material, caselaw and jurisprudence, I identify three distinct legal meanings. The first meaning is that of a blanket denial of any legal effect of conciliation agreements. Under this meaning, courts simply leave conciliation agreements unenforced. The second meaning is that of applying a restrictive interpretation on conciliation agreements. Under this meaning, conciliation agreements must be drafted in a particular form and any deficiency in them may cause the agreement to be denied legal meaning. The third meaning is that of applying a liberal interpretation to conciliation agreements. Under this meaning, any clearly expressed intention to conciliate is given independent legal effect, if necessary through a constructive interpretation that overcomes deficiencies in form. Lacking any binding international legislation on conciliation, I reflect on these three different meanings of conciliation in light of the brocard pacta sunt servanda; agreements must be kept. A key problem is that no single content can be identified for pacta sunt servanda itself; courts use this brocard to represent not only different interpretive paradigms, but also the more general principles of equity. Agreements are enforced to the extent that their content is understandable and acceptable to the relevant legal system. Discourse over this acceptability takes place through the principle of pacta sunt servanda and all the concepts and ideas used to clarify that principle. Thus, identifying the true motives of courts that apply different kinds of meaning to conciliation agreements is difficult. Therefore, I argue that the only meaning that can reasonably be attributed to conciliation in the international commercial context is that of a liberal interpretation seeking to assign legal effect to all agreements to conciliate. Doing so would alleviate paradigmatic confusion when courts interpret conciliation agreements and better protect the true intentions of the parties. Another compelling reason for adopting a liberal interpretation of conciliation agreements is the inherent value of conciliation for international dispute resolution in general. It has been recognised by business actors, international dispute resolution institutes, international and national legislation, and courts of law. In practice, while leading authorities view preparing for a restrictive interpretation of conciliation agreements as a "safe choice", business actors should also acknowledge that courts have increasing possibilities for applying a liberal interpretation to conciliation agreements. Thus, business actors should avert negative consequences, for example in relation to the validity of arbitral awards, by acting to uphold any contractual intention to conciliate prior to commencing litigation. Section 2 provides an overview of the legal and practical contexts of international commercial conciliation. In Section 3, I review a number of legal instruments and caselaw on conciliation and, based on these, identify three different meanings given to conciliation in different legal contexts. Finally, in Section 4, I evaluate the three different meanings of conciliation in light of their legal and practical implications. Section 4.4 provides an overview of the key findings on a general level and particularly in relation to Finnish law.

The international penal system -- Decentralised national enforcement -- Centralised international enforcement -- Localised national enforcement -- The contemporary international penal system -- International penal policy -- International penal practice -- Operationalising international penal strategy -- An international prison system -- Guarding the guardians -- The development of the international penal system

Peace agreements offer rule-based approaches, which distinguish from some variable peace processes and are manifested as establishing a legal peace. This legal peace is provided in the following forms:1) Peace agreements evaluate internal and external interactions for the legitimacy of government through distorting government and supporting human rights; a different composition of public and private (non-government) signatories;2) Peace agreements are common treaties riding over national (interior) and international legal issues;3) Different forms of legal commitments; peace agreements embraces both valid organizational regulations and contracts or pseudo- commitment contracts;4) Various third party agencies; peace agreements rely upon common law coalition government and contain multiple oppositions, common law and political mechanisms and their implementation.These various ways simultaneously reflect settlement ways of peace agreements. If legal issues are ignored and peace agreements are properly considered, they may be argued as a temporary international constitution. Peace agreements provide a powerful plan for governing; however, they are often minor and temporary requiring developed.

This article shows how national interests in price-changing international commodity agreements can be measured. Two approaches are distinguished. Firstly, changes in national interests can be measured that are caused by the introduction of an international commodity agreement in an otherwise unregulated world market. This approach is based on a comparison of the situations with and without a commodity agreement. It represents a positive approach to measuring national interests. Secondly, changes in national interests can be measured that result from the individual country's decision to participate in the agreement or to stay outside. This approach compares the situation of participation with that of non-participation in an existing commodity agreement. As the consequences of a national decision are analyzed, it is a normative or decision-oriented approach to measuring national interests. The ICA is a particularly interesting scheme to show the two approaches, as some countries participate in the agreement while others do not. This has led to the co-existence of a controlled and an uncontrolled market with different prices.

AbstractThe article evaluates the relationship between the Responsibility to Protect (RtoP) principle and international law. We argue that although the principle is best understood as a political commitment to implement already existing legal commitments, the RtoP is not devoid of legal content as some of its critics claim. The principle contains two sets of legal responsibilities. The first – responsibilities owed by a state towards its own population – are well-established customary principles in international law. The second – responsibilities owed by states to populations in other states – are much less well established. We argue that although RtoP does not in itself create new legal duties, states already have international legal responsibilities that relate directly to the principle's second pillar. Moreover, we identify the emergence of nascent legal thinking which suggests that a wider set of legal duties might emerge in the future.

This compelling and comprehensive collectionof articles highlights good practices ingender equality in the world of work. Thearticles, all of which have been featured inthe ILO's World of Work magazine from 1999to the present, are international in scope,covering such issues as women job-seekers inEstonia, an innovative life-cycle approach togender equality in Tanzania, and progressivepolicies on paternity leave in Norway.

AbstractIn this article we examine the relationship between the institutional set‐up of the EU foreign policy‐making process and the international actorness of the EU in two particular cases: the International Criminal Court and the Kyoto Protocol. Whereas in both cases policy‐making is organized along intergovernmental lines, the EU has shown a relatively high degree of international actorness. We argue that this is the combined result of the considerable congruence of EU Member States' initial preferences and the social interactions between EU Member States, third countries and non‐state actors, through which preferences converged even further over time.

Evidence shows that national justice has been slow, ineffective or unwilling to judge major political and military leaders responsible for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity on a large scale. Hence the justification for international criminal justice. This book reviews the achievements and limitations of the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, and the creation of mixed national/international courts: the Special Court for Sierra Leone and the Cambodia Tribunal. The major, unexpected and promising judiciary innovation is however the creation of the International Criminal Court in 1998, supported by the UN, European Union members and other countries, effectively promoted by NGOs, but strongly opposed by the USA. The Court will have to show that it is a fair and valuable instrument in fighting impunity at the international level. Not a legal treatise, this book combines historical, legal and political elements in a highly readable text on the development of international criminal justice, which should be of interest to both the academic community, international organisations and concerned observers