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In this chapter, the author offers a horizontal comparison of interpretation standards contained in international legal instruments of different origin. These legal instruments range from international treaties to model laws. They also originate from different law makers such as the United Nations or individual states as well as trade or academic organisations, mainly regulating civil and commercial matters. The author argues that this comparison can provide the basis for the development of a uniform standard in the application of such law, which is often referred to as uniform law because it provides a single source of law to regulate a multitude of situations spanning across national boundaries. The main point of reference is the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, also known as the VCLT. This UN treaty specifically provides a general interpretation standard. From there newer standards occurring in subsequent uniform laws can be integrated using the lex specialis doctrine. This, in turn, provides opportunities for comprehensive usable methods to be developed for uniform law both in a public and private law settings. These then facilitate transparency, fairness and reasonableness. The correct identification of object and purposes of any given instrument is crucial for the successful interpretation of its content. It is this point that needs further research, and this chapter offers a starting point by providing some detailed examples from a range of uniform laws of varying nature including international sales laws, arbitration laws and Double Taxation Conventions.

This chapter looks at the past, present and future of international cannabis control required by the UN drug control conventions in the post-2016 United Nations General Assembly Special Session era with an eye on the next High Level Ministerial Segment (HLMS) at the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs in 2019, and beyond. From a policy analysis perspective, the author meanders through the increasing tendency to legally regulate recreational cannabis markets notwithstanding the obligation enshrined in the UN drug control conventions to limit cannabis exclusively for ‘medical and scientific’ purposes. Taking into account relevant national and international developments, the chapter describes how the growing discomfort with the status of cannabis and the prohibitive and punitive approach stemming from the international drug control regime went through a process from soft to hard defections of the treaty obligations. The case of the Netherlands demonstrates the difficulty faced by reform-minded states in reconciling their wish for a different cannabis control mechanism with their obligations under international law, resulting in an incomplete regulation of its coffee-shop system, where small amounts of cannabis are tolerated for sale, but where the illicit supply to the shops remained unregulated. Subsequent more wide-ranging reforms to regulate cannabis from seed to sale in Uruguay, several US States and – in 2018 – in Canada, are clearly violating the obligations of the UN drug control conventions. Nevertheless, the HLMS will likely leave the elephant in the room untouched. The emerging paradigm shift regarding cannabis shows that a modernisation of the UN drug control regime is long overdue. This chapter discusses some of the options available.

Trade in counterfeit products has been expanding continuously. The emergence of the internet, the process of globalisation as well as the increase of digitalisation have enabled counterfeit products to infiltrate legitimate supply chains, causing harm not only to national economies but also to holders of intellectual property rights (IPR). In this chapter, we analyse the possible solutions that holders of IP rights and their legal representatives have in their fight against the online sale of counterfeit products. To elaborate on this issue, first, we explain the legislation on an international level for IPR protection and its specific characteristics. We explain the conventions on the protection of IPR that are governed by the World Intellectual Protection Organisation (WIPO) and the provisions of the TRIPS (Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights) Agreement governed by the World Trade Organisation (WTO). We also analyse the national legislative procedure of protecting and enforcing IPR in North Macedonia to explain a possible solution to fight online counterfeit trade. As a case study of this chapter, we explain the work of the Online Enforcement Programme of REACT as a not-for-profit organisation with over 30 years of experience in the fight against counterfeit trade and the challenges that they have in fighting against the online sale of counterfeit products. Since IP law is territorial in its nature as a conclusion, we suggest that a more centralised approach is needed in the fight against the online sale of counterfeit products.

This chapter explores the historical context of drug control in the United States, the ongoing regulation of the cannabis market at the State level and the role of the United States in the international negotiations related to the United Nations General Assembly Special Sessions (UNGASS) on drugs in 1998 and 2016. We continue by analysing the position, allies and activities of the United States before and during UNGASS 2016 to provide an understanding of possible scenarios related to the 2009 Political Declaration and Plan of Action review to take place via a High-level Ministerial Segment within the 2019 Commission on Narcotic Drugs meeting. While US drug policy is not expected to positively shift in the next few years, State-level regulation of cannabis is expected to continue and create pressure from below.

This chapter is about child labour as slavery in modern and modernizing societies in an era of rapid globalization.

For the most part, child slavery in modern societies is hidden from view and cloaked in social customs, this being convenient for economic exploitation purposes.

The aim of this chapter is to bring children's ‘modern slavery’ out of the shadows, and thereby to help clarify and shape relevant social discourse and theory, social policies and practices, slavery-related legislation and instruments at all levels, and above all children's everyday lives, relationships and experiences.

The main focus is on issues surrounding (i) the concept of ‘slavery’; (ii) the types of slavery in the world today; (iii) and ‘child labour’ as a type, or basis, of slavery.

There is an in-depth examination of the implications of the notion of ‘slavery’ within international law for child labour, and especially that performed through schooling.

According to one influential approach, ‘slavery’ is a state marked by the loss of free will where a person is forced through violence or the threat of violence to give up the ability to sell freely his or her own labour power. If so, then hundreds of millions of children in modern and modernizing societies qualify as slaves by virtue of the labour they are forced – compulsorily and statutorily required – to perform within schools, whereby they, their labour and their labour power are controlled and exploited for economic purposes.

Under globalization, such enslavement has almost reached global saturation point.

This chapter addresses the possible consequences of the United States Supreme Court's increasing attention to international and foreign human rights law in its death penalty jurisprudence, particularly with respect to the Eighth Amendment. I question the belief of those commentators who argue that such attention might assist with efforts to abolish the death penalty in the United States, and argue instead that the perceived threat to state sovereignty that the invocation of international and foreign human rights law poses might result in attempts to retain the death penalty as a means of reasserting state autonomy.

This chapter examines how international human rights law is shaping the politics of immigration. It argues that migrant human rights are neither conceptually nor practically incompatible with an international order premised upon state territorial sovereignty, and that the specific aesthetics of the contemporary international human rights system, namely its formalistic and legalistic tendencies, has facilitated its integration with a realm of policymaking traditionally reserved to state discretion. An exploration of two areas in the emerging field of migrant human rights traces the multi-scalar transnational legal processes through which these norms are formulated and internalized.

This chapter asks whether the United States would benefit from establishment of a national independent children’s rights institution (ICRI). This chapter begins with insights into why the United States has not established a national ICRI. Although about half of the 50 US states have set up children’s rights ombudspersons, most of these state-level institutions do not focus on rights of all children and their efforts are not coordinated. This chapter discusses what ICRIs do and what their essential qualities are, then seeks to demonstrate that an ICRI will meet needs of American children and their rights. This chapter suggests that a national US ICRI can participate in international activities around children’s rights, which will advance rights and interests of American children.

The intersection between drug control and the death penalty represents a key nexus for human rights and drug reform advocacy and constitutes one of the most visible examples of the link between abusive law enforcement and drug control in the current period. The issue has emerged as a flashpoint of international debates on drugs and is one that raises important questions and challenges for both ‘abolitionist’ countries that oppose the death penalty and ‘retentionist’ States that continue to execute people. The death penalty for drug offences cannot be dismissed as simply an internal matter for States. Not only do executions for drug offences violate significant international human rights legal protections, domestic capital punishment laws in many cases cannot be separated from the influence of the international drug control treaty regime. This chapter will explore the question of the death penalty for drug offences and the challenges it presents for the international drug control regime more broadly.¹