Search Results

Since 1991 the cultural heritage of Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina has fallen victim to cultural purification. International organizations have declared that the systematic and deliberate destruction of libraries and archives constitutes a crime against humanity as defined by international law and the Geneva (1949) and The Hague (1954) conventions. While librarians are concentrating their efforts on the reconstruction of the buildings and collections, the International War Tribunal in The Hague is prosecuting the Serb leaders of Bosnia for crimes against culture.

Countless studies have been done in Western countries on landscape, be they about its materiality, social representations, or the public policies to which it is the object. In contrast, other than their material dimensions, the social representations of the landscape, have been much less studied in the Southern countries, while landscape policies are virtually non-existent, and thus so are studies about them. Nevertheless, the western concept of “landscape” is infiltrating the countries in different ways, with the current development of an International Convention of the Landscape, modeled on the European Convention of Landscape (Florence, 2000), process that has not been studied yet. That is what leads us to question about the ways landscape can exist in the Southern countries as an object of public policies. In this article, we ask what landscape means through the prism of its institutionalization in the Southern countries, where cultures are often very different from those of Western countries. To address this question, we use an approach that considers landscape as a complex of interrelated dimensions, including material, ideal (representations) and Political (the dimension of the action). This reflection will lead us to propose research paths dealing with the implications of transferring this model.

Keywords: paysage, pays du Sud, représentations sociales, politiques publiques, approche langagière du paysage, landscape, Southern countries, social representations, public policies, landscape approach through language

Secularity, both a historical heritage and a constitutional principle, has many specific caracteristics in France. Many question its evolution in view of France's visible socio-cultural modifications, its international commitments and its presence in Europe. The case of the "islamic scarf" may be very revealing in this respect. As a matter of fact, State Council jurisprudence has already demonstrated the evolution of secularity. The study of this case covers other European and American countries and concludes with the inescapable reorientation of secularity.

According to French doctrine, the economy of contract is one of the most influent judge-made law concept in the modern civil law of contracts. This flowing concept was firstly used in 1894 by French courts followed since 1919 by the Québec courts. However, the influence of the economy of contract is more significant in French law through its consecration by the constitutional judge. This study constitutes an introduction to the concept in comparative law. Therefore, it presents a high interest for the doctrine of contract in Québec where the notion is still unknown.

Keywords: Contrat, économie du contrat, obligation essentielle, équilibre du contrat, interprétation, théorie du contrat, Contract, economy of contract, essential obligation, balance of contract, interpretation, theory of contract

On 21 July 2010, the President of the United States of America promulgated the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act relating to stock market transactions in the country. Some provisions of this law have effects in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, namely section 1502 entitled "Conflict Minerals". This paper analyzes the legality of this section under international law, regarding the principle of state sovereignty and the notion of the reserved area. It shows that the section 1502 appears to recognize the role of the DRC in the management of its natural resources, but wonders if a conflict is possible between, on one hand, the powers attributed in this section to US authorities in the struggle against the conflict minerals, and, on the other hand, the powers that the DRC must exercise over its natural resources and on economic activities taking place on its territory. Finally, it warns that with the issue of conflict minerals there is an emerging risk for the DRC to see the management of its natural resources internationalized.

Some topics appear recurring in international law doctrine and international law subjects are obviously one of those. If sovereign States are classically recognized as the first and unique subject of international law, the multiplication of actors on the international scene leads other entities to pretend to achieve this craving status. In front of the doctrine's variations and hesitations, practice, taking the form of case law and positive law, shows an evident pragmatism towards non-state actors (either natural person or legal entity). They indeed progressively recognize to these other international actors that the traditional doctrine excludes (excluded?) from the closed category of subjects of international law, rights and obligations. Faced with this situation, the doctrine is somehow forced to evolve. The reciprocal dialogue between practice and doctrine allows then international law to grow up towards adulthood taking into account the reality and diversity of contemporary international relations. The diversification of international law subjects is therefore not a useless complexity of international law, but the sign of its developing maturity.