Grammar revision

IV. Translate these sentences into Russian. Pay attention to the underlined words.

1. This enquiry should therefore begin with a note of warning.

2. Failure to grasp this crucial fact would inevitably entail a serious

misinterpretation of the impact of law on this community.

3. The first salient feature of international law is that most of its rules

aim at regulating the behave our of states, not that of individuals.

3. Today it could be maintained with greater truthfulness that without

the protection of state human beings are likely to endure more suffering and hardship than what is likely to be their lot in the normal course of events.

3. National systems encompass very many legal subjects: citizens,

foreigners residing in the territory of the state, corporal bodies, and

state institutions (if endowed with legal personality).

3. All other subjects either exercise effective authority over territory for a limited period of time only or have no territorial basis whatsoever.

4. Were states to disappear, the present international community would either fall apart or change radically.

5. There is another category of international subjects, namely insurgents, who come into being through their struggle against the state to which they formerly belonged.

6. Insurgents are therefore not easily accepted by the international community unless they can prove that they exercise some of the sovereign rights typical of states.

Speaking

V. Answer the questions, using the information from the text

1. What would it lead to if you don’t understand that the features of the world community are unique?

2. What is the first salient feature of international law?

3. What are the goals of the states?

4. What are the principal legal subjects within states?

5. What are the secondary subjects within states?

6. Why is the protection of a state so important for the international community?

7. What legal subjects do national systems encompass?

8. Why are states paramount?

9. What does it mean that states possess full legal capacity?

10. All states are equal, aren’t they?

11. Who are insurgents?

12. How do they assert themselves?

13. What does it mean that the existence of insurgents is provisional?

14. What is a distinct feature of modern international law?

15. What is the difference between states and relatively “new” subjects such as international organizations, individuals and national liberation movements?

Read the texts “ Insurgents” and “National liberation movements”.

Insurgents

Insurgency has occurred frequently since the inception of the international community. Civil strife raged in North America between 1774 and 1783: the fight between American settlers and the British colonial power (which today would be styled a ‘war of national liberation’, although the rebels were white, like the colonial power) lasted a long time and wrought havoc; it ended with the victory of the rebels. Between 1810 and 1824 other rebellions broke out on the same continent, against Spanish and Portuguese rule in Latin America. Once again, the insurgents got the upper hand. In the nineteenth century a number of internal armed conflicts also erupted in Europe, yet the most important civil war of all took place in the USA between 1861 and 1865, and was attended by such appalling devastation and cruelty that the contestants regarded it as no different from a war proper, and consequently applied to it the bulk of the rules governing armed conflict between States. In the twentieth century internal conflicts were particularly serious, protracted, and destructive. The Spanish Civil War 1936-9 stands out for its magnitude and far-reaching repercussions. After the Second World War, conflicts broke out in some Western and socialist countries: in Greece (1946-9), in Hungary (1956), in Czechoslovakia (1968), in Turkey (1983 to the present), in the former Yugoslavia (1991-5 and 1998-9) and in Chechnya (1991-6 and 1999-2001). However, most major insurrections in modern times have tended to take place in developing countries.