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.
An Overview of State Succession Issues Arising as a cResult of an Armed Conflict
This chapter addresses the question of what happens to legal protections of foreign investors under a BIT when an armed conflict leads to a situation of State succession. It first examines the actual practice of States concerning the continuation of BITs. Such continuation depends on the express or tacit agreement of both States concerned, i.e. the successor State and the “other State Party” to the BIT which was signed by the predecessor State. The chapter also examines the question of what happens to BITs when the States concerned have not agreed on any such continuation. I will argue that BITs do not automatically continue to be in force as of the date of succession unless both States concerned have agreed to such a continuation.
The combined analysis of remagnetization circles and direct observations in palaeomagnetism
Abstract When demagnetizing rocks in palaeomagnetism, an unterminated great circle path is sometimes obtained instead of a direct observation or endpoint determined from the linear segment near the origin of a Zijderveld plot. Such a situation cannot successfully be analysed using packages such as LINEFIND or Linearity Spectrum Analysis (LSA). It is possible to make optimum use of the great circle information by specifying constraints in the form of an arc of the great circle along which the estimate of the actual direction must lie. This specification overcomes the bias problems inherent in most analyses of converging great circles. GivenM endpoints or direct observations andN great circles the maximum likelihood analysis based on all available information is easily performed. An iterative procedure is used to determine the positions ofN variable-direction unit vectors so that the length,R, of the vector resultant of all (M + N) unit vectors is a maximum. Standard Fisher statistics then apply, with a slight modification for the numbers of degrees of freedom. Ifκ is the precision parameter then an approximately unbiased estimate for (1/κ) is given by (1/k) where:k=2M+N−2/2(M+N−R). Ifα is the angle between the estimated direction and the true direction then a cone of confidence (1 − p) about the mean direction has a semi-angleαp given by:cos αp=1−N′−1κR[(1/p)1/(N′−1)−1 withN′ = M +N/2.