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The authors ask themselves what might be the effects over the Water Resources Law of the practical developments of two relatively recent concepts: the environmental necessity test and the precautionary principle. Originated in two different fields of the International Law (International Trade Law and Environmental Law), the two are able to influence the Water Resources Law through different modalities, that the authors examine. The conclusion is that the complementarity of the two instruments can be helpful in order to increase the utility of their (independent or conjunct) contribution to solving some of the problems that Water Resources Law confronts with.

The Gérin-Lajoie doctrine has well served Quebec. Since its formulation in 1965, the Quebec government has applied such doctrine in entering into international agreements and assuring its external representation, both in States and within international organizations. These actions have made Québec into a dynamic actor on the world stage. The international extension of its domestic jurisidction on which this doctrine is based has aslo led to the establishment of a Ministry of International Relations which coordinates Québec's international action. Since 2002, the Gérin-Lajoie doctrine has been given a parliamentary dimension through the approval process of important international commitments of Quebec. The Act respecting the ministère des Relations internationales defines an “important international commitment” as an international agreement which requires, for its implementation by Québec, the passing of an Act or the making of a regulation, the imposition of a tax or the acceptance of an important financial obligation, concerns human rights and freedoms, concerns international trade or should be tabled in the National Assembly. Among the numerous international agreements that now bind Québec, 54 have been considered to be ‘'important‘' and have been tabled in the Québec's National Assembly. They have, except in two cases, been approved its by members. In the great majority of cases, approval was given by an unanimous vote. This new practice reveals however some shortcomings related to the delay and timing of the approval. Whereas Canada does not provide for a parliamentary approval of important international committments, this new parliamentary dimension of the Gérin-Lajoie doctrine meaningfully contributes to a real democratization of the process by which Quebec declares itself bound by important international commitments. The National Assembly is thus assuming in an new fashion its role as a guardian of the historical and inalienable rights and powers of the people of Quebec.

This essay recounts how feminist theorists and activists managed to write their ideals into the fabric of French law and culture, and how non-feminists began to appropriate those ideals. The Loi no 2000-493 du 6 juin 2000 tendant à favoriser l'égal accès des femmes et des hommes aux mandats électoraux et fonctions électives [Loi sur la parité] that requires half of all candidates for public office be women, saw French feminists first engineer a change in French universalism to respect sex difference; although not wholly successful, this law advanced women's political inclusion. Then, like a drop of water in a pond, these feminist ideas disappeared in plain sight: they became intrinsic to French state norms and public values. As they became woven into such norms, however, politicians began to use them to promote exclusions: first excluding Muslims from full participation in the Republic with veil and burqa bans, then supporting exclusions of sex and class with a corporate board quota (CBQ). Most recently, feminist ideas have been called upon to exclude French Muslims with proposed burkini bans.

Keywords: France, quotas de femmes, féminisme, fonction publique, conseils d'administration, entreprises, laïcité, voile, France, sex quotas, feminism, corporate governance, secularism, islamophobia

Our article presents an analysis of the efficiency of the banking sector by comparing the efficiency of private banks and public banks. Indeed, the difficult situation in which Tunisian public banks are passing leads us to determine the causes of the inefficiency of these banks and obliges us to seek the possible solutions to this problem. Possible solutions include three cases: merger, recapitalization and privatization. Our sample is made up of all Tunisian commercial banks during the period 2005-2014. To measure the efficiency of these banks, we use translogarithmic specification for the cost function. The results show that public banks are more inefficient than private banks with a smaller size: private banks have the highest efficiency scores, with a sectoral average of (81.3%). Indeed, credit risks are the main cause of the technical inefficiency of public banks. This implies that the latter have many problems of management and in particular of governance.

In Algeria, the industrialization program after independence, high population growth with the "over-urbanization of the North" that has created and unemployment aggravated by the structural adjustment program have had because of the quality of environment, both in urban areas than in villages. That's why, like many countries, Algeria after three decades of development, and a passage gap in the ecological culture, realized since the emergence of the particular debate on development-environment she has, as well as developed countries, problems of environmental order that it cannot ignore (pollution, erosion, fragility of the vegetation cover and the impoverishment of its potential, over-urbanization, etc.) However, this awareness of the fragility of the environmental situation coincides with an economic and financial crisis. To measure the extent of environmental problems in Algeria and to provide as effective as long-term solutions, it appears important to place environmental issues in the broader context of socio-economic development model followed since l962. In this article, our focus is whether the Algerian economic policy pursued since independence can claim a development be it economically, and if so how it can be done in harmony with the environmental protection. This goal leads us to look for, from and within the internal dynamics of economic and Algerian industrial structures, identifying the link between economic policy, industrial and alteration of the environment. We will adopt the analysis, which is to focus on the causal consideration of environmental issues in relation to economic policy implementation.

Keywords: environnement, développement durable, Algérie, politique industrielle, ressources naturelles, environment, sustainable development, Algeria, industrial policy, natural resources

In this article, I study the impact which international students at the Université de Montréal had on the union, institutional and inclusion practices of particularly involved Quebec students, such as those active in the students association (the Association générale des étudiants de l'Université de Montréal, AGEUM) or the student newspaper Quartier latin. I show that in the face of international students, the AGEUM initially saw itself destabilized, following which it adopted a paternalistic approach to subdue those who questioned its status as spokesperson for students and youth. I then explore the strategies of international students to put forward their points of view and to take ownership of AGEUM's mode of discourse and to participate in student politics through their own association, Cosmopolis. The latter, set up with the means at hand and informed by the many nationalities that compose it, established itself in only a few years' time as a mouthpiece of AGEUM and sounding board, in Montreal, for issues that consumed the 1960s and 1970s, such as racism, decolonization, immigration, cultural integration and the place of Quebec in the Francophonie.

Keywords: étudiants étrangers, jeunesse, journal étudiant, interculturalisme, université, racisme, international students, youth, student newspaper, interculturalism, university, racism

Two conflicting coalitions would advocate opposite conceptions of river pollution in the French public space at the end of the 1950s. River fishermen would consider pollution as a crime and they would draw on biology to make these offenses visible. Engineers, urbanists and hygienists would, by contrast, perceive pollution as resulting from dearth of sewerage and sewage treatment, the cost of which they would try to reckon. Both mobilizations shaped the regulation of waste water discharge and the indicators used to evaluate the scope of river pollution– a problem never monitored at national level before. Three biologists crafted the biotic index so that the first inventory of river pollution included biological data. This indicator rests on categories which resulted from mutual enrolments between angling organizations and scientists.

Keywords: pollution, pêches, réglementation, indicateurs, indice biotique, pollution, fisheries, indicators, bylaws, biotic index

In the United States, abortion is still a highly polarizing issue. Since 2010, there has been a significant increase in the number of legal restrictions on abortion in several states despite the fact that access to abortion has been recognized by the Supreme Court as a constitutional right in 1973 in the decision Roe v. Wade. However, this article goes beyond the United States' domestic law. Rather, it addresses access to abortion in the United States from a different angle, under-studied, which is public international law. Precisely, the article will demonstrate why, in terms of access to abortion, the United States do not respect their obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) which they ratified in 1992. In order to determine the obligations of the States that have ratified the ICCPR, the protections related to access to abortion that the Covenant provides will then be illustrated through an analysis of the “jurisprudence” of the Human Rights Committee. Access to abortion in the United States will then be examined. To this end, the evolution and current state of the Supreme Court of the United States' jurisprudence on access to abortion will be analyzed. The reality on the ground will also be analyzed to capture the real effects of legal restrictions limiting access. The current political situation regarding the Supreme Court's composition will be exposed in order to highlight the political nuances beyond the legal aspect regarding abortion in the United States.