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Customary Law Obligations and Dispute Resolution Methods under International Law relating to Conflicts over the Shared Use of Transboundary Aquifers
23-48Views:203Our paper aims at analyzing the current stance of public international law concerning the utilization and management of transboundary aquifers. 97% of the Earth’s drinking-water supplies are locked up in aquifers placing the question in the spotlight as to, which ways States should utilize and apportion them in a manner consistent with public international law? The paper argues that bilateral and regional agreements ensure most effectively States’ mutual cooperation regarding transboundary aquifers, and they are also essential in providing for clear dispute resolution mechanisms. The paper addresses the obligations of States under international law and examines the efficiency of the possible international dispute resolution methods regarding international water conflicts. The paper also provides an overview of all existing bi- and multilateral aquifer agreements and draws some comparative remarks.
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Digitization at Work: Expanding Horizons with Loopholes
61-80Views:424The focus of the study is on the emergence and spread of digitization in employment. In this context, the study presents the forms of work that use digitization. On the other hand, it describes the labour market effects of digitalization. The study looks in detail at how COVID-19 has changed the role of teleworking and the home office in employment. This is followed by the presentation of the Hungarian labour law regulation, which deals exclusively with telework. The study makes two proposals to address the codification gap. On the one hand, in connection with application-based work, the introduction of the status of a person with a similar legal status to an employee, which was regulated in the draft of the Labour Code. On the other hand, to impose employer obligations (retraining, job offers) in connection with the spread of automation and robotics in order to prevent dismissal.
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Regulation of Autonomous Vehicles in Public International Law, in particular on the Subject of International Road Traffic
37-49Views:162The study examines the regulation of autonomous vehicles in public international law, more specifically the regulation related to the territory of international road traffic. Within this topic, the study defines autonomous, or in other words, self-driving vehicles, reveals the relation between these kind of vehicles and public international law, describes the results and steps made so far toward uniform regulation and analyzes the possibilities for future regulation. In connection with the latter, the study concentrates on the question of international treaties and would like to answer whether it is necessary and possible to conclude an international treaty on autonomous vehicles.
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Specialities of Collective Labour Disputes
217-232Views:160We are currently living in a period when technological, economic and other changes fundamentally influence the nature of legal relationships. There is no difference in the labour law palette, as atypical employment is gaining ground in law enforcement circles. In our view, this development cannot be derived solely on substantive law, but should also be presented at the level of litigation and, where appropriate, ADR procedures. Perhaps it is somewhat ironic that it is precisely the collective labour dispute, which is not popular in Hungarian civil society litigation law, in which the emergence of innovative dispute resolution methods can be observed from time to time. Therefore, our work primarily examines the extrajudicial practice of collective dispute resolution, complemented by the solutions used in the legal systems of some countries less researched by the domestic labour law environment. Our aim is to highlight the potential of ADR methods in collective disputes and to explore new, unknown opportunities for domestic law enforcement.
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The International Legal Framework of Maritime Piracy
161-177Views:263Although maritime piracy is the oldest crime committed at sea, it is still present to this day and counts as a threat: it not only endangers human lives but also causes damage to international trade. Firm actions must be taken against this international crime and those international agreements which define the definition and the elements of conduct of maritime piracy and also contain procedural provisions to suppress it count as vital elements of these actions. Currently there are two agreements which contain anti-piracy regulations and they regulate several matters appropriately but they also have many shortcomings. In this article I examine the anti-piracy regulations of these agreements.
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Defences in International Criminal Law
35-53Views:110The Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) was adopted at a diplomatic conference in Rome on 17 July 1998 and it entered into force on 1 July 2002. The ICC Statute contains rules regarding grounds for excluding criminal responsibility but this list is not exhaustive since other defences are recognized in international (criminal) law. This essay will not examine the special procedural defences and other obstacles of punishability which are explicitly rejected by the ICC Statute but focus on the substantial defences in international law: the lack of responsibility under a certain age; insanity and intoxication; justifiable defence; necessity and duress; mistake; superior orders; belligerent reprisals and military necessity.
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A Missed Opportunity: the Judgement of the International Court of Justice on the Environmental Related Legal Dispute of Costa Rica and Nicaragua
181-199Views:379This article introduces and evaluates the judgment of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) regarding the case concerning certain activities carried out by Nicaragua in the Border Area (Costa Rica v. Nicaragua) proceedings joined with construction of a road in Costa Rica along the San Juan River (Nicaragua v. Costa Rica) from an environmental point of view. The case was one of the latest environmental related affairs before the ICJ and the Hungarian literature had been looking forward with great expectation regarding the Court’s award. The conclusion of this essay is that in spite of the nature of the dispute, the symmetry of the conflict and the constant need for the improvement of the general international environmental law, the ICJ missed the opportunity to develop international environmental customary law and the case will stay in the shadow of the ICJ’s previous judgement on Pulp Mills on the River Uruguay.
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Harmonization of Arbitration Laws in some Asian and European Countries
68-77Views:162The present paper studies the relationship between domestic and international arbitration laws and the harmonization factor amongst some Asian and European jurisdictions. During the last decades, there has been a significant change and globalization in the world and with the expansion of businesses and trade a better dispute resolution mechanism is required in order to maintain the harmony in international trade. It has become a necessity to balance the domestic arbitration laws with the international ones. This brief paper identifies and comments on some of the areas where differences remain including differences in recognition and enforcement of arbitral awards in various jurisdictions over the public policy defence, and where further examination and research to reach and solve disputes amicably might be useful.
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Legal position of the roma minority under International and European Law : Thoughts on the monograph of Anikó Szalai
166-170Views:159Book review on Aniko Szalai's book, the title is Protection of the Roma Minority under International and European Law. (Eleven International Publishing, the Hague, 2015.)
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The Constitutional Obstacles before the Promulgation of the Rome Statute
45-59Views:333July 17, 1998, can be considered as one of the most important milestones of the international judicial structure: it is the day when the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court was adopted by 120 states out of 148. Article 86 of Statute explicitly states that „States Parties shall […] cooperate fully with the Court in its investigation and prosecution of crimes within the jurisdiction of the Court.” As in the case of every international treaty, the principle of pacta sunt servanda enshrined in Article 26 of the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of the Treaties states applies, which explicitly states that “every treaty in force is binding upon the parties to it and must be performed by them in good faith.” As has been pointed out by the Permanent Court of International Justice, contracting states must make all the necessary internal measures which are required to fulfil its international obligations rising from a binding treaty. One could ask, why is this quite obvious argument important in the case of Hungary? Well, Hungary has ratified the Statute but still has not implemented it in its internal legislation. This can be considered as a serious constitutional omission, since if the Court would require the cooperation of Hungary – e.g. in the case of an arrest warrant – and it would not be able to fulfil it because of the lack of the internal legal norms, it would be considered as international legal responsibility of Hungary. In this article, I try to explore the reasons behind this omission and outline the possible solutions.
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Protection of Marriage and Family in Central Europe
7-31Views:234It is no exaggeration to say that family plays a prominent role in our daily lives. This study therefore examines the constitutional and family law foundations of family protection in seven Central European countries. The study describes, among other things, the nature of family law legislation, the conceptual approach to family and marriage, the legal protection and solution of extramarital partnerships, such as de facto partnerships and registered partnerships, and the status of children in the countries studied.
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The Effect of the Jurisprudence of the ECHR on the Hungarian Criminal Procedure Act
128-150Views:279The case law of the European Court of Human Rights and the European Convention on Human rights set the minimum level for the protection of fundamental rights that has to be guaranteed by all contracting parties, although national laws can establish higher standards. Point II of the general explanations of Bill No. T/13972 on the new Act on Criminal Procedure states that “meeting the requirements of the Fundamental Law of Hungary and the obligations of international law and EU law obviously mean a safeguarding minimum.” In Hungary the case law of the ECHR is reflected more and more both in the judgements of Hungarian courts and in the guidelines of higher courts but the difficulties of establishing interpretations in harmony with ECHR case law are common. The paper analyses the judgments of the ECHR in Hungarian cases between 2013 and 2016 related to pretrial detention, effective defence and the circumstances of restraint.
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Crimean Secession in International Law
9-28Views:311This article provides detailed insights into the validity of remedial secession, the two major judicial opinions that have addressed it (Kosovo advisory opinion by the International Court of Justice, and the Quebec Secession Reference case decided by the Supreme Court of Canada), and the steep, but evolving, path to legitimacy it may now be travelling. This article does so within the context of Crimea’s secession referendum, declaration of independence, and de facto statehood, and Russia’s annexation of Crimea. It covers the international community’s reaction to these events – and the disparity among academic reactions to the vitality of remedial secession. It traces the UN General Assembly’s 2014 Crimean debate – concluding that it is the most authoritative referee for judging Russia’s claim to the validity of the Crimean secession.
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Circumstances Affecting the Degree of Restitution in the Jurisprudence of Labour Law
192-208Views:97The study examines the dogmatics of the legal institution of restitution applicable in the case of infringements of personality rights in labour law, as well as looking at the functions determining the sanctions in the international and domestic legal environment. It classifies states based on the effect wished to be triggered with the legal institution as well as regarding the circumstances to be considered. It determines the governing factual elements and circumstances with regards to the degree of the institution of restitution. It projects the standpoints of special literature to the practice. It analyses and classifies trivial cases in the light of judicial case law.
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Symbolic Legislation in Criminal Law
173-189Views:250The study makes efforts to analyse the concept of symbolic legislation, particularly the question of the symbolic criminal law. In the first part of the paper, the author discusses the issues of international (German) literature which relates to the problem of symbolic criminal law. The second part contains the Hungarian theoretical standpoints from which the author draws the conclusion that the concept of symbolic criminal law can be interpreted in multiple ways. Symbolic criminal law is described by some scholars as a critique of the legislature, however according to other opinions – which are the focus of this essay – the concept of symbolic criminal law has a positive meaning which includes the viewpoint that the legislator tries to turn the attention of society to the obligation of saving the general ethical values, and on the other side, it emphasizes the high-priority values set by the legislator in actual social-political situations
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Alternative Solutions to the Problems Posed by the Coronavirus Pandemic in the Field of Social Law (An International Outlook)
124-144Views:267The 2020 coronavirus pandemic is forcing such political, economic and social responses from the leaders of the nations of the world which in many cases have never been seen before. Excellent new concepts have been formed through the work of professionals, and there have been initiatives that have proven in the short term to be not well-founded. The present study was created in order not to miss the chance to examine the established practices, taking advantage of the opportunity provided by the crisis, as this year can offer many lessons for decision-makers for the future.
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Foreign Loan: Cross-border temporary agency work in Hungary, with special regard to the employment of third-country nationals
43-60Views:252The special feature of temporary agency work is that the employee does not work for the agency which concludes the employment contract with them, but for a third party, the user company, with which the agency enters into a civil law contract for the remunerated transfer of workforce. The article summarises how an international element can appear in this tripartite employment relationship. It covers the rules under which an agency may conclude an employment contract with a foreign employee and also the cases where the agency and the user company are established in different states. Although Hungarian law generally prohibits third-country nationals to work in Hungary as agency workers, this is made possible by an expanding range of exceptions. The article explores the labour law and social security law situation of third-country agency workers in Hungary.
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The Legal Status of Victims of Sexual Violence in International, European Union and Domestic Law
Views:56The study describes the concept and the legal status of the victim of sexual violence in view of the fact that the definition of victim in criminal procedure law is not the same as the broader definition of victim used in criminology at domestic or international levels. The Me Too movement drew attention to a problem in 2017 that is still waiting to be solved years later: preventing and eradicating violence against women, as well as making the role of the victims during procedure and their legal options more effective. A brief, overview categorization of this legal situation shows what emerging tendencies can be discovered in the European Union’s legislative process nowadays, and based on these, what the problematic areas are in domestic law where change is needed.
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The Future of International Environmental Law
139-145Views:96Book review on The Future of International Environmental Law, szerk.: David Leary és Balakrishna Pisupati, 2010, Tokió, United Nations University
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The Concept of the Right to Food in Public International Law
86-99Views:163According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), at least 868 million people are undernourished nowadays. Combating against hunger and malnutrition shall not only be a moral duty, but a legally binding human rights obligation. The right to food is recognized firstly within the text of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted in 1948, as part of the right to an adequate standard of living, however nowadays it is considered to be a substantive right. This study deals with the key aspects of the right to adequate food in public international law, including its definition, content and enforcement, as well.
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Social Dumping in the Face of Cross-border Collective Agreements and Actions: A Dilemma of the European Legal Practice on the Edge of Law and Economy in the Light of the Framework of International Standards
180-202Views:153In this paper I outline the objectives of the ILO, the conventions relevant to collective bargaining and action, and furthermore the pronouncements of the ILO supervisory bodies. After describing social dumping I examine the jurisprudence of the European Union regarding the collision of fundamental freedoms and collective labour rights in the light of international labour standards. My observation is that the hierarchical relationship between fundamental freedoms and labour rights in favour of the former cannot be maintained even based on EU law.
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A Case Study on the Interaction Between the General Data Protection Regulation and Artificial Intelligence Technologies
45-57Views:210This paper presents a general overview of the problems regarding the regulation of artificial intelligence (AI) raised in the official published works of the European Union (EU) and interprets these problems from the perspective of the Hungarian experts as a case study. Even though a new regulation on AI has already been proposed at the EU level, the paper evaluates specific rules and principles regarding data protection since data is the lifeblood of AI systems and the protection of such data is a fundamental right enshrined in the EU legislation via the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The result of the study shows that the application of the GDPR on AI systems in an efficient and uniform way might be at stake since different outputs were generated by the experts to the same legal questions deriving from a scenario presented.
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The right to strike in the case-law of the ECtHR
115-133Views:228The right to strike has been long recognized as an important labour right in the European countries protected by constitutions and international conventions on labour and social rights. However, these international conventions mainly contain mere declarations to only pursue the right to strike and do not have an effective protection mechanism. Nevertheless, in the last few decades a human rights perspective on labour law gained ground and thus international organizations and international courts started to derive labour rights like the right to strike from civil and political rights and therefore some of these labour rights enjoy the same level of protection as the first generation human rights. In its recent judgements, the European Court of Human Rights stated that the right to strike is protected under Article 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights and developed a case law on the requirements of a lawful strike action, secondary strike actions and the restrictions of the right to strike.
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The Legal Status of Titanic
8-18Views:167It has been ten decades now since the luxurious, unsinkable ship started its first and last voyage. The centenary of the tragedy has put ancient shipwrecks into the centre of attention and denoted the legal gaps and anomalies of national and international legal efforts to regulate their legal status and to protect them from treasure hunters. The essay aims to define the legal status of R.M.S. Titanic as being one of the most famous shipwrecks of our time, its story and legal situation might be the object-lesson for the problems and deficiencies of the legal issue of international protection of underwater cultural heritage, the sovereignty and ownership of historical objects found at sea and the anomalies of customary international law concerning shipwrecks.
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Law of Sustainable Development
11-30Views:305Sustainability or sustainable development as an objective or as a definitions is wirely used since the 1992 Rio Conference on Sustainable Development. There are many attempts to clarify the content of it, most of them covering inter- and intragenerational equity, integration, the different means and methods of long-term thinking. While it is still a controversial question, it is also difficult or even harder to specify the legal content of such a policy matter. The law of sustainable development shall be able to meet the challanges of clarity, enforceability, thus one should try to be more specific then it is acceptabel in the wider the political context. Several international documents, conventions, even EU legislation wants to come closer to the problem. If we wish to translate the content into the legal language, then there are some elements of such a legal system, which we would like to underline: inter-generational equity and right to environment, public participation, cooperation, integration, precaution and subsidiarity. There is also a newly emerging element of the legal understanding – imported from ecology –, which needs greater attention today, that is resilience.