Jus cogens is a formidable yet elusive concept of international law. Since its incorporation in the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties some 35 years ago, it has made tentative inroads into international legal practice. But its role in international law is arguably less prominent than might have been expected on the basis of its powerful potential and in view of wider developments in international law that call for constitutionalisation and hierarchy, including the processes of fragmentation and humanization. This volume of the Netherlands Yearbook of International Law sets out to clarify the concepts and doctrines relevant to jus cogens and to sharpen the debate on its theoretical foundations, functions and legal effects. To that purpose, the volume brings together contributions on the genesis and function of jus cogens, on the application of jus cogens in specialised areas of international law and on its enforcement and legal consequences.Together, they reinforce the understanding of jus cogens as a hierarchical concept of international law and shed light on its potential for further development.
The book in front of you is the first international academic volume on the legal, philosophical and economic aspects of the rise of 3D printing.In recent years 3D printing has become a hot topic. Some claim that it will revolutionize production and mass consumption, enabling consumers to print anything from clothing, automobile parts and guns to various foods, medication and spare parts for their home appliances. This may significantly reduce our environmental footprint, but also offers potential for innovation and creativity.
At the same time 3D printing raises social, ethical, regulatory and legal questions. If individuals can print anything they want, how does this affect existing systems of intellectual property rights? What are the societal consequences of the various types of products one can print with a 3D printer, for example weapons? Should all aspects of 3D printing be regulated, and if so, how and to what ends? How will businesses (have to) change their way of working and their revenue model in light of the shift to printing-on-demand? How will the role of product designers change in a world where everyone has the potential to design their own products? These and other questions are addressed in high quality and in-depth contributions by academics and experts, bringing together a wide variety of academic discussions on 3D printing from different disciplines as well as presenting new views, broadening the discussion beyond the merely technical dimension of 3D printing.Bibi van den Berg is Associate Professor at eLaw, the Center for Law and Digital Technologies at Leiden University, The Netherlands. Simone van der Hof is Full Professor at eLaw in Leiden and Eleni Kosta is Associate Professor at TILT, the Tilburg Institute for Law, Technology and Society at Tilburg University, The Netherlands.
Ensuring online safety has become a topic on the regulatory agenda in many Western societies. However, regulating for online safety is far from easy, due to the wide variety of national and international, private and public actors and stakeholders that are involved. When regulating online risks for children it is important to strike the right balance between protection against harms on the one hand and safeguarding their fundamental freedoms and rights on the other. The authors in this book attempt to grapple with precisely this theme: striking the right balance between ensuring safety for children on the internet while at the same time enabling them to experiment, to learn, to enrich their lives, to acquire skills and to have fun using this global network. The authors come from various scientific disciplines, ranging from law to social science and from media studies to philosophy. This means that the book provides the reader with both empirical and theoretical/conceptual chapters and sheds a multi-disciplinary light on the complex topic of regulating online safety for children.
This volume of the Netherlands Yearbook of International Law (NYIL) addresses the question how the assumption that states have a common obligation to achieve a collective public good can be reconciled with the fact that the 195 states of today's world are highly diverse and increasingly unequal in terms of size, population, politics, economy, culture, climate and historical development. The idea of common but differentiated responsibilities is on paper the perfect bridge between the factual inequality and formal equality of states. The acknowledgement that states can have common but still different - more or less onerous - obligations is predicated on the moral and legal concept of global solidarity. This book encompasses general contributions on the function and the content of the related principles, chapters that describe and evaluate how the principles work in a specific area of international law and chapters that address their efficiency andbroader ramifications, in terms of compliance, free-rider behaviour and shifting balances of power. The originality of the book resides in the integration of conceptual, comparative and practical dimensions of the principles of global solidarity and common but differentiated responsibilities. The book is therefore highly recommended reading for both academics with a theoretical interest and those working within international organisations. The Netherlands Yearbook of International Law was first published in 1970. It offers a forum for the publication of scholarly articles in a varying thematic area of public international law.
