Injunctions, super-injunctions ?

[RandBlade]

Newsflash: The Soviets are gone though their heirs are authorised full members of the Council while the most successful and credible western nations are not. 70 years ago we still had an Empire too. Times change.

I embrace the whole world not one tiny corner of it.

I grew up in Australia, a thriving rights respecting democracy not in the Council.
I'm married to a South African. Her nation has issues but is still better than Erdogan or Putin.
My in laws live in Canada. Another thriving rights respecting democracy not in the Council.
Our most important partner is America. The world's biggest rights respecting nation. Also not in the Council.

The world is smaller than it was 70 years ago. To be obsessing about our continent and ignoring the wider world is naive.

[Aimless]

Not sure what geography has to do with human rights?

Geography is relevant because several of the countries you mentioned are not party to treaties that are only applicable to European nations. Canada isn't a member of the EU so it's not surprising that it isn't necessarily completely bound by EU law or treaties that specifically concern EU nations. Canada is instead bound by other treaties as well as customary international law. Canada has for example signed the UDHR even though it initially chose to abstain because it didn't want communists, JW:s etc to have any rights.

I must wonder, RB, if it surprises you that Brits drive on the wrong side of the road when they're in the UK but drive normally when they're in eg. Sweden.

Being a signatory to the Convention patently is meaningless because there are a great number of nations that are signatories who have shocking human rights.

This is an extremely stupid kind of reasoning. By this standard, all contracts ever are meaningless because some people don't fulfil their contractual obligations. Does this mean that you haven't signed any contracts? For your home, your mortgage, your employment, your insurance etc? Do you believe that laws, too, are meaningless because some people break laws? Do you believe that gun-control is meaningless because criminals will continue to obtain and use guns as they see fit? Do you believe that laws pertaining to driving and road safety are meaningless because some people drink and drive recklessly?

These treaties are intended to guide those who respect the rule of law. They are not expected to fully bind those who don't care about the rule of law. While you're correct in your assessment that there are severe limitations on how these treaties are enforced, eg. that they don't involve policing and physical punishment like your domestic laws do, they are enforced in other ways that are more appropriate in the context of international law. Obviously we could in principle enforce international law more aggressively and even through military means but the reasons for being more restrained than that should be obvious to you unless you secretly dream of a British police-state where the police go around shooting all suspected criminals and esp. those who throw stones at mounted police.

I must confess I feel there truly must be something rotten at the core of a man who implies that he'd break the law if he knew he could get away with it or whose standard of good and ethical conduct is based on what rapists and murderers do.

While there are a number of great nations outside that have excellent human rights.

You may care for a piece of paper more. I care if a system works and ours works, Americas works, Australia's works. Russia does not, Turkey does not, Georgia does not. Despite them being in the precious club.

Indiscriminate surveillance, torture, extraordinary rendition, illegal incarceration, illegal internment of refugees and violations of their rights, mistreatment of indigenous peoples. I think you need to be more honest about your definition of the term "works".

[Aimless]

The world is smaller than it was 70 years ago. To be obsessing about our continent and ignoring the wider world is naive.

Said the man obsessively focusing on the UK's parochial perspectives and ignoring both the EU and international law

[Aimless]

I embrace the whole world not one tiny corner of it.

Are you trying to tell me you believe you are bound by the domestic laws of all nations irrespective of what nation you yourself currently reside in? Just... what? Wtf?

[LittleFuzzy]

This is an extremely stupid kind of reasoning. By this standard, all contracts ever are meaningless because some people don't fulfil their contractual obligations. Does this mean that you haven't signed any contracts?

In Rand's defense, there is a big difference. In those cases there is legitimate authority, with genuine power to either enforce the contracts or enforce penalties for breaching them. This is not the case with the topic under discussion here. Countries like Russia can completely ignore such treaties because there is no legitimate authority OR power which can even make an effort at stopping them or enforcing penalties. That's why "international law" is not actually law the way you *and others* seem to try and pretend that it is. Treaties like that really aren't worth the paper they're printed on, they have as much weight as a politician's campaign promise. I believe there is substantial efficacy in liberal instutionalism, Minx, but. . . things like the ECHR ignore the "institutionalism" bit. If they want to be more than the Kellog-Briand Pact, they need to actually build something, tie states together in real interdependence, and that treaty doesn't do anything of the sort. Which makes it so much lofty-sounding crap, just like the Pact was.

These treaties are intended to guide those who respect the rule of law. They are not expected to fully bind those who don't care about the rule of law.

That's not what law is.

I must confess I feel there truly must be something rotten at the core of a man who implies that he'd break the law if he knew he could get away with it or whose standard of good and ethical conduct is based on what rapists and murderers do.

He's not talking about morals, he's talking about power. Sovereignty is power. Treaties which consist of nothing but promises aren't.

[Khendraja'aro]

Said the man obsessively focusing on the UK's parochial perspectives and ignoring both the EU and international law

Yeah, taking that particular stance is a bit asinine. One might even say: Stupid.

[Khendraja'aro]

This is not the case with the topic under discussion here. Countries like Russia can completely ignore such treaties because there is no legitimate authority OR power which can even make an effort at stopping them or enforcing penalties.

Doesn't make contracts meaningless, though. That's what Rand suggested and that's what very much not the case.

[LittleFuzzy]

Doesn't make contracts meaningless, though. That's what Rand suggested and that's what very much not the case.

If it doesn't have a means of generating compliance beyond opprobrium from others, if it just consists of a pledge to "not do a)" then yes, it is meaningless. It has no value other than the paper it's printed on.

I would like to apologize to Minx, though, I was getting the ECHR (and more importantly, the court issuing binding rulings on its issues, the ECtHR) mixed up with one of your other myriad, similarly named institutions and treaties. There is, in fact, an enforcement mechanism and its rulings and penalties do generally get carried out (eventually) even in the face of opposition from countries like Russia. Though the way such states manage to pervert the interpretation of the articles doesn't help. I couldn't help but notice how the ECtHR had managed to almost completely drop the provision to respect the religious and philosophical values of parents in the article on education.

[RandBlade]

Doesn't make contracts meaningless, though. That's what Rand suggested and that's what very much not the case.

No I did not. What I actually said involved a very specific nuance as a qualifier:

I don't want the UK to do that but any sovereign nation can do what it pleases ultimately, "contracts" are absolutely and entirely meaningless if a country decides to revoke them. We had a contract with your nation that you wouldn't invade Poland but did that stop you? When push came to shove what use were the Munich Agreement or the League of Nations?

Are you that illiterate or ignorant that I need to explain the meaning of the word "if" to you? Do you need to be educated on what an if logic statement is?

Or do you think that the ECHR has prevented Erdogan from abusing human rights? Has it prevented Putin from doing so? Did the Munich Agreement prevent you invading Poland?

What was the meaning of the Munich Agreement to an occupied Pole, or of the ECHR to a Chechnyan being abused by Putin?

[RandBlade]

Said the man obsessively focusing on the UK's parochial perspectives and ignoring both the EU and international law

I'm not ignoring either, if you go back to what sparked this conversation we were talking about an issue that only exists in England and Wales. Not even the UK, let alone the EU or nationally. So it's up to England and Wales to fix its own troubles.

Are you trying to tell me you believe you are bound by the domestic laws of all nations irrespective of what nation you yourself currently reside in? Just... what? Wtf?

No, I am suggesting I couldn't care less that a nation is in or out of Europe (or Asia or Africa or America etc) if we are making comparisons or judgements. Its meaningless and irrelevant.

[LittleFuzzy]

No I did not. What I actually said involved a very specific nuance as a qualifier:
Are you that illiterate or ignorant that I need to explain the meaning of the word "if" to you? Do you need to be educated on what an if logic statement is?

Or do you think that the ECHR has prevented Erdogan from abusing human rights? Has it prevented Putin from doing so? Did the Munich Agreement prevent you invading Poland?

What was the meaning of the Munich Agreement to an occupied Pole, or of the ECHR to a Chechnyan being abused by Putin?

It doesn't much matter since A) no one has revoked them and B) the rest of the European Council might actually have sufficient power to coerce a "former" signatory into acceding to the rulings and penalties assigned by the Court regardless of their attempt to withdraw. Russia has more than once eventually had to shift from refusing to pay levied fines into reluctant payment, and that's because of deliberate pressure placed on them by the rest of the Council.

[RandBlade]

A) No-one has revoked them but that option exists if a nation decides to exercise it.
B) Realpolitik is meaningful, absolutely, never said otherwise.

Russia pays a token attention to pretending to maintain human rights. If anyone thinks Russia genuinely has great human rights then I'd like them to speak up and say so.

[LittleFuzzy]

A) No-one has revoked them but that option exists if a nation decides to exercise it.
B) Realpolitik is meaningful, absolutely, never said otherwise.

Russia pays a token attention to pretending to maintain human rights. If anyone thinks Russia genuinely has great human rights then I'd like them to speak up and say so.

It doesn't matter what Russia does. What matters is whether Russia gets punished for it, which is something that does happen.

[Hazir]

It's a bit rich by the way to have a Brit (from a country that actively ignored rulings) talk about Russia being sloppy in its application of rulings.

@LF it's the Council of Europe, not the European Council. The two are separate entities.

[RandBlade]

I haven't said anything about how Russia adapts to rulings actually ...

[LittleFuzzy]

It's a bit rich by the way to have a Brit (from a country that actively ignored rulings) talk about Russia being sloppy in its application of rulings.

@LF it's the Council of Europe, not the European Council. The two are separate entities.

See what I said earlier about the myriad similar treaties and institutions which all have very similar names.

[Hazir]

See what I said earlier about the myriad similar treaties and institutions which all have very similar names.

I know, I was hoping to reduce confusion, not trying to be pedantic.

[Khendraja'aro]

No I did not. What I actually said involved a very specific nuance as a qualifier:
Are you that illiterate or ignorant that I need to explain the meaning of the word "if" to you? Do you need to be educated on what an if logic statement is?

Or do you think that the ECHR has prevented Erdogan from abusing human rights? Has it prevented Putin from doing so? Did the Munich Agreement prevent you invading Poland?

What was the meaning of the Munich Agreement to an occupied Pole, or of the ECHR to a Chechnyan being abused by Putin?

My dear, a sovereign nation can always decide to revoke contracts. Still doesn't make them meaningless. Maybe you should work on that logic, it seems you're labouring under some delusions. Your intellect is not as great as you seem to think it is.

That makes your "if blah blah blah" statement rather meaningless, by the way, which in itself is quite ironic. Plus, you are rather ignoring the consequences of revoking/breaking the contracts you listed as examples.

"Hey, guys, breaking this contract started World War 2! What a completely meaningless piece of paper!"

Maybe you'll try to argue that one in front of a judge: "Your honour, the contract became meaningless the second I revoked it unilaterally!" Yeah, that will go over well.

[RandBlade]

Yes the Munich Agreement was meaningless since you didn't follow it, so military action was needed to be meaningful rather than rely upon the Munich Agreement to resolve it by itself.

You guys invading Poland started WWII, the Munich Agreement didn't start WWII. WWII would still have happened even if the Munich Agreement had never been signed.

[Loki]

They weren't meaningless. Violating them turned Hitler into a pariah and guaranteed that his next act of aggression would be met by force.

[RandBlade]

That was the case with or without the agreement.

[Loki]

According to? Without a such a blatant violation of a major international treaty, who's to say Hitler wouldn't be given another chance?

[Hazir]

According to? Without a such a blatant violation of a major international treaty, who's to say Hitler wouldn't be given another chance?

Your question assumes that the person you ask the question to can actually take a step back and look at the bigger picture. As it is your question has no use.

[Aimless]

If it doesn't have a means of generating compliance beyond opprobrium from others, if it just consists of a pledge to "not do a)" then yes, it is meaningless. It has no value other than the paper it's printed on.

I would like to apologize to Minx, though, I was getting the ECHR (and more importantly, the court issuing binding rulings on its issues, the ECtHR) mixed up with one of your other myriad, similarly named institutions and treaties. There is, in fact, an enforcement mechanism and its rulings and penalties do generally get carried out (eventually) even in the face of opposition from countries like Russia.

While the world of European law may constitute a separate legal order or bizarre parallel legal universe much like that of WTO law, even international law at other levels can be both coercive and persuasive, both externally and internally, albeit generally less aggressively and less directly (for obvious reasons). In some ways that may make international law less meaningful than other kinds of law, but when it successfully compels diplomacy, when it causes adversaries to accept a ruling from a third party such as a tribunal, when it leads to severe economic sanctions, when it allows--or prevents--some actor to take military action, when it ultimately leads to a person being tried and convicted in an international court for war-crimes and crimes against humanity, or when it gradually--through acculturation if nothing else--leads to the internalisation of liberal democratic norms of human rights as well as less violent norms of international relations, I think it's a bit extreme to call it entirely meaningless. Flawed, crippled, sure. But meaningless or even worse than nothing? I dunno.

I'm sure there are various legitimate perspectives on the matter but I suspect that few of those perspectives--if any--would consider the significance of violating international law--esp. treaties--to be zero. Actors that show an inclination to unilaterally violate treaties may find it more difficult to make favorable treaties with more law-abiding actors in the future, with more egregious violations (eg. military alliance-treaties or treaties governing the laws of war) having more noticeable consequences either through reciprocity or in the form of lost political capital. It also seems as if actors that hold their legal treaty obligations in high regard and strive to uphold the rule of law are less willing to violate their treaty obligations even when under significant pressure (see for example the US non-surrender agreements).

That was the case with or without the agreement.

Are you saying that Germany, upon invading Poland, would have been immediately met with considerable military force from Britain and France and others even if there hadn't been a Munich agreement beforehand and even if it hadn't violated the agreement by invading Czechoslovakia? Is there any way to determine whether or not that belief is correct?

[Loki]

The fact that Stalin and Hitler both invaded Poland, but Britain opted for allying with Stalin against Hitler is pretty telling. This was despite communism being viewed as a far bigger threat by Britain. Stalin was evil, but viewed as being relatively reliable. Hitler could not be trusted, despite the British (and others) previously making every effort to get Hitler in their corner against the Soviet Union.

[LittleFuzzy]

While the world of European law may constitute a separate legal order or bizarre parallel legal universe much like that of WTO law, even international law at other levels can be both coercive and persuasive, both externally and internally, albeit generally less aggressively and less directly (for obvious reasons). In some ways that may make international law less meaningful than other kinds of law, but when it successfully compels diplomacy, when it causes adversaries to accept a ruling from a third party such as a tribunal, when it leads to severe economic sanctions, when it allows--or prevents--some actor to take military action, when it ultimately leads to a person being tried and convicted in an international court for war-crimes and crimes against humanity, or when it gradually--through acculturation if nothing else--leads to the internalisation of liberal democratic norms of human rights as well as less violent norms of international relations, I think it's a bit extreme to call it entirely meaningless. Flawed, crippled, sure. But meaningless or even worse than nothing? I dunno.

Except all of those things still accrue on disapproval even WITHOUT a treaty. The Non-Proliferation Treaty isn't international law and Iran is not a signatory, but that didn't matter a damn bit wrt to the reactions from the rest of us. That's why international law on the level you're talking about is meaningless. You make it indistinguishable from an environment without international law but governed by realism and realpolitik instead.

[Aimless]

Except all of those things still accrue on disapproval even WITHOUT a treaty. The Non-Proliferation Treaty isn't international law and Iran is not a signatory, but that didn't matter a damn bit wrt to the reactions from the rest of us.

As far as I can tell, Iran has ratified the NPT and is considered to be party to it, and has been repeatedly found to be in violation of at least the spirit of the treaty and possibly also the letter of it, or at the very least being non-compliant with its treaty obligations. Moreover, even if it hadn't been party to the treaty, UN sanctions against Iran may still have found legal justification in ch. VII of the UN charter as an appropriate measure against a perceived threat to the peace (interesting to contrast the response to Iran's shenanigans with the response to India's defiance of the will of the international community). Finally, we may have arrived at a point where it's worth asking whether or not the NPT--or at least some of its provisions--may have attained the status of CIL. Don't think we're quite there yet.

[LittleFuzzy]

As far as I can tell, Iran has ratified the NPT and is considered to be party to it, and has been repeatedly found to be in violation of at least the spirit of the treaty and possibly also the letter of it, or at the very least being non-compliant with its treaty obligations. Moreover, even if it hadn't been party to the treaty, UN sanctions against Iran may still have found legal justification in ch. VII of the UN charter as an appropriate measure against a perceived threat to the peace (interesting to contrast the response to Iran's shenanigans with the response to India's defiance of the will of the international community). Finally, we may have arrived at a point where it's worth asking whether or not the NPT--or at least some of its provisions--may have attained the status of CIL. Don't think we're quite there yet.

For some reason, I though it was Pakistan that was the signatory and Iran which wasn't. Oh well. I can substitute North Korea just as easily, they're definitely not a signatory. I wanted to avoid using North Korea mostly because they're such a total pariah in just about every sphere.
And yes, it is interesting to contrast with India. Because that demonstrates exactly what I said, the controlling element is realism and realpolitik, not material which isn't international law, despite your attempt to broaden the meaning of that concept to anything which might compel diplomacy or gradually acculturate others to more liberal democratic norms.

[Loki]

North Korea was a signatory when it started its nuclear program. It's much easier to get a global sanction program in place against someone who was part of the NPT. Note the lack of such efforts against Pakistan and India.

[LittleFuzzy]

It's much easier to get a sanctions regime going against a state which is already a pariah in many respects and which doesn't have the world's second largest population and one of the top economies and political "leaders" of the third-world as well.