The double-facing foreign relations function of the executive and its self-enforcing obligation to comply with international law

How does the international Rule of Law apply to constrain the conduct of the Executive within a constitutional State that adopts a dualist approach to the reception of international law? This paper argues that, so far from being inconsistent with the concept of the Rule of Law, the Executive within a dualist constitution has a self-enforcing obligation to abide by the obligations of the State under international law. This is not dependent on Parliament’s incorporation of treaty obligations into domestic law. It is the correlative consequence of the allocation to the Executive of the power to conduct foreign relations. The paper develops this argument in response to recent debate in the United Kingdom on whether Ministers have an obligation to comply with international law–a reference that the Government removed from the Ministerial Code. It shows that such an obligation is consistent with both four centuries of the practice of the British State and with principle

Crotalus transversus

Number of Pages: 3Integrative BiologyGeological Science

Rewriting History: A Study of How the History of the Civil War Has Changed in Textbooks from 1876 to 2014

History textbooks provide an interesting perspective into the views and attitudes of their respective time period. The way textbooks portray certain events and groups of people has a profound impact on the way children learn to view those groups and events. That impact then has the potential to trickle down to future generations, fabricating a historical narrative that sometimes avoids telling the whole truth, or uses selective wording to sway opinions on certain topics. This paper analyzes the changes seen in how the Civil War is written about in twelve textbooks dated from 1876 to 2014. Notable topics of discussion include the discussion of slaves and slavery, as well as the recognition, or lack of, the impact of minority groups. Many changes were traced, some for the worse, and quite a few for the better. Despite the efforts to make history textbooks more inclusive and unbiased, there is still much room for improvement, especially in regard to facing race relations and the causes behind the bloodiest war ever fought on American soil