Global law: confronting the transnational criminal

Philosophers of liberalism from Rousseau to Rawls have placed the good citizen at the centre of the liberal political arrangements they advocate. These good citizens bear their obligations and exercise their rights within the law of nation states. They enjoy status in their communities, communities to which they owe allegiance. Conceptions of the nature of this citizenship vary widely. Some have a trace of the totalitarian. Rousseau famously argued that humans living in a society must reconcile their own sense of subjective freedom with the objective need to act correctly (Rousseau, 1762, chs 5-8). In a state of nature they live only for themselves; as citizens they cease to be individual units and become parts of the new unit, the community.&nbsp

Waltzing on the Vienna Consensus on Drug Control? Tensions in the International System for the Control of Drugs

This article examines the tensions within the international drug control system which are putting the until now consensual position in regard to the prohibition on drugs supply and use for anything other than medical and scientific use – the Vienna Consensus – under strain. The article examines a number of areas where policy stress is leading to controversy about potential violation of international drug control treaty obligations by states parties. Drawing a comparison with earlier periods of stress when drug control fell under the League of Nations, it suggests that what appears to be occurring is a shift in the Vienna consensus, and that the drug conventions are sufficiently flexible to permit resulting shifts in practice, although reform would be preferable

International legal protections for combatants in the South African armed conflict.

Thesis(LL.M.)- University of Natal, Durban, 1988.The African National Congress (ANC) is engaged in an armed conflict with the South African Government for control of South Africa. ANC combatants are being prosecuted under South African criminal law as rebels, a process which undermines the normative value of the criminal law because it is in conflict with popular support for the ANC. International law provides a humanitarian alternative to the criminal law. This study investigates the international legal protections available to combatants in the conflict. Lawful combatant status and prisoner of war status would only be available if the South African armed conflict was classified as international. It has been argued that the international status of the ANC, derived from the denial of self-determination to the South African people, internationalises its war against the South African Government. Attempts have been made to enforce this concept. Article 1(4) of Geneva Protocol 1 classifies armed conflicts involving a movement representing a people with a right of se If-determination against a .. racist re,gime" as international. But South Africa did not accede to Protocol 1 and the argument that it is custom fails because of insufficient international support. Nevertheless, the developing situation justifies an examination of the personal conditions required to gain protectedstatus. The conditions in Article 4 of Geneva Convention 3 (1949) are onerous, making it impracticable in South Africa. Protocol l's updated conditions are more suited to the armed conflict. The Conventions and Protocol 1 also make available procedural and substantive protections to combatants and deal with special issues particular to South Africa. The South African armed conflict can alternatively be classified as non-international. Common Article 3 of the 1949 Conventions applies because South Africa is party to them. Geneva Protocol 2 is not .applicable because South Africa is not a party to it. Unfortunately, Article 3 only applies general humanitarian principles and not protected status. To conclude, because of the inadequate means for enforcing the classification of the South African armed conflict as international and the inadequacy of the protections available under the law of non-international armed conflict, it is urged that the Government confer ex-gratia. lawful status on ANC combatants

‘Trust in Translation: Diplomatic Assurances, the New Zealand Supreme Court, and Extradition to China’

Assurances allow a requested State to build a cocoon of minimum special treatment standards around someone in a system which otherwise breaches human rights on a regular basis. The adequacy of the assurances is essentially what was at issue in June 2021 and April 2022, when the Supreme Court of New Zealand released two landmark extradition decisions, the Minister of Justice v Kyung Yup Kim [2021] NZSC 57 (per Glazebrook, Ellen France and Arnold JJ) and the Minister of Justice v Kim [2022] NZSC 44 (again per Glaze brook, Ellen France and Arnold JJ). In 2018 the New Zealand Court of Appeal had quashed a decision of then Minister of Justice Amy Adams to surrender a New Zealand resident to China. He was wanted for murder in Shanghai

Epilogue

China is increasingly aware of the role and potential it can have to influence the world development. This has led it to reconsider and develop foreign policies, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) being a new flagship of them. The economic tone in China’s foreign policy has given it a soft flavor.Peer reviewe

“Key to the Future”: British American Tobacco and Cigarette Smuggling in China

BACKGROUND: Cigarette smuggling is a major public health issue, stimulating increased tobacco consumption and undermining tobacco control measures. China is the ultimate prize among tobacco's emerging markets, and is also believed to have the world's largest cigarette smuggling problem. Previous work has demonstrated the complicity of British American Tobacco (BAT) in this illicit trade within Asia and the former Soviet Union. METHODS AND FINDINGS: This paper analyses internal documents of BAT available on site from the Guildford Depository and online from the BAT Document Archive. Documents dating from the early 1900s to 2003 were searched and indexed on a specially designed project database to enable the construction of an historical narrative. Document analysis incorporated several validation techniques within a hermeneutic process. This paper describes the huge scale of this illicit trade in China, amounting to billions of (United States) dollars in sales, and the key supply routes by which it has been conducted. It examines BAT's efforts to optimise earnings by restructuring operations, and controlling the supply chain and pricing of smuggled cigarettes. CONCLUSIONS: Our research shows that smuggling has been strategically critical to BAT's ongoing efforts to penetrate the Chinese market, and to its overall goal to become the leading company within an increasingly global industry. These findings support the need for concerted efforts to strengthen global collaboration to combat cigarette smuggling

International Prison Standards and Transnational Criminal Justice

Prison standards are an important element of transnational criminal justice. This Article shows how legal standards governing prison conditions emerged at the international and regional levels and considers how, increasingly, they have gained legitimacy. It then describes how these standards are applied in a way that contributes to a recognizable transnational legal order in respect of prison conditions, which has real impact at the national level. The Article pays close attention to the transfer of prisoners between states, as a mechanism that operates transnationally and, in the process, enhances the importance of international prison standards. It concludes that the benefits of common prison standards are mixed. On the positive side, they have the potential to give states that are asked to extradite suspects, or transfer sentenced prisoners, leverage to demand the improvement of prison conditions in the receiving states. There is, however, a risk that states will accept and implicitly endorse sub-standard prison conditions in order to rid themselves of troublesome offenders