Theories and Practice of State Succession to Bilateral Treaties: The Recent Experience of Kosovo
This article explores the most recent practice, as exemplified by the case of Kosovo, concerning succession to treaties in international law. In doing so, it examines the precise meaning and legal effects under international law of relevant provisions of the Declaration of Independence (DoI) of Kosovo with respect to international treaties concluded by the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) and the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY) or, as applicable, any other predecessor entity. More specifically, the aim is to identify and comprehend the fundamental principles underlying the existing or developing practice of treaty succession, and to situate it within a broader framework of succession in international law. Kosovo's absence from key multilateral regimes, in particular the United Nations, dictates a focus on succession to bilateral treaties. Kosovo is in the process of establishing with its partners the status of its bilateral treaties undertaken by way of succession.
A Middle‐Triassic Paleomagnetic Pole for the Eurasian Plate from Heming (France)
The paleomagnetic study of Middle Triassic limestones (91 cores, 160 samples) from a 40 m thick section in Heming (France) yields a paleomagnetic pole for stable Europe at lat=53.5°N, lon=140.8°E, dp=2.3°, dm=3.9°. This pole fills an important gap of the apparent polar wander path (APWP) of the Eurasian plate. The comparison of this pole with available data shows a standstill of the Eurasian plate from the Late Paleozoic to the Middle Triassic, followed by a rapid drift until the Lower Jurassic. The beginning of the rapid drift is contemporaneous with the initiation of main rifting processes in the Tethyan Oceans.
Classification of the reversal test in palaeomagnetism
SUMMARY It is standard practice that a positive reversal test is claimed on the basis of inability to reject the hypothesis that two distributions share a common mean direction, and thus the claim of a positive reversal test is in fact often based on a lack of information. This is unsatisfactory. Therefore it is suggested that positive reversal tests should be classified according to the amount of information that was available for the test. This amount of information is readily indicated by the critical angle (e.g., at the 95 per cent confidence level) between the two sample mean directions at which the hypothesis of common mean direction for the distributions would be rejected. It is recommended that 5", 10" and 20" be used as the breakpoints in the classification.