UNIT 4. THE INTERNATIONAL LAW OF TREATIES

*B. Match the words with their definitions:

READING

*A. Read the text and comment on the principles of the international treaty law:

Nowadays treaties play a fundamental role in international relations.Article 38 of the Statute of the International Court of Justice gives a good starting point for the understanding of the sources of international law. According to this article international law finds its origin in the following three sources:

–international conventions of general or particular nature;

–international custom, as evidence of a general practice accepted

as law;

–the general principles of law recognized by civilized nations.

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The codification governing this legal area is the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties of 1969 which has entered into force on 27 January 1980. Although the Vienna Convention is not applicable to treaties concluded before its entry into force (Article 4) it is de facto applied to those too, since it incorporates – at least to a large extent – customary rules which were already applicable before this date. Moreover, the Vienna Convention applies only in the absence of other applicable agreements and is therefore of subsidiary character.

The Vienna Convention which consists of 85 articles, eight parts and an annex includes and materializes five fundamental legal principles, i.e.

–free consent;

–good faith;

–pacta sunt servanda ( a treaty is binding upon the parties);

–rebus sic stantibus (a fundamental change of circumstances jeopardizes the validity of treaties);

–favour contractus (it is better to seek the maintenance rather than the termination of a treaty).

Free consent and good faith are the leading principles which ought to be always followed by States in the course of their relations with one another.

The other major principles which also emanate from the Roman Law tradition apply in particular either to the conclusion of treaties or to the interpretation or application of treaties.

(Walter Gehr “The international law of treaties”)

*B. Answer the following questions:

1.What plays a fundamental role in international relations nowadays?

2.Can you describe sources of the international law?

3.How many principles is the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties of 1969 based on?

4.What areas do these principles apply to?

5.Which principles are the leading ones?

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3.The majority of these systems have __________ from France.

4.The purpose of the UN is the ________ of international peace and

security.

5.Law was no longer conceived of as an eternal set of principles expressed in custom and derived from___________.

6.They had to take such measures for the ________ of their further

policy.

**D. Match prepositions with the words:

**E. Make your own sentences with these words.

***F. Translate the sentences from Russian into English:

1.Поддержание мира является основной задачей этой международной организации.

2.Совокупность юридических доводов помогла им в этом сложном процессе.

3.Когда этот закон вступил в силу?

4.Эти правила соответствуют международным нормам в области экономики и ведения торговли.

5.Вы предоставили документы в международный суд?

6.Знаешь ли ты определение международного права?

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READING

***A. Read one more extract from Conan Doyle’s story “The sign of four”

“Look at his long letters,” he said. “They hardly rise above the common herd. That d might be an a, and that I an e. Men of character always differentiate their long letters, however illegibly they may write. There is vacillation in his k’s and self-esteem in his capitals. I am going out now. I have some few references to make. Let me recommend this book – one of the most remarkable ever penned. It is Winwood Reade’s Martyrdom of Man. I shall be back in an hour.”

I sat in the window with the volume in my hand, but my thoughts were far from the daring speculations of the writer. My mind ran upon our late visitor – her smiles, the deep rich tones of her voice, the strange mystery which overhung her life. If she were seventeen at the time of her father’s disappearance she must be seven-and-twenty now – a sweet age, when youth has lost its self-consciousness and become a little sobered by experience. So I sat and mused until such dangerous thoughts came into my head that I hurried away to my desk and plunged furiously into the latest treatise upon pathology. What was I, an army surgeon with a weak leg and a weaker banking account, that I should dare to think of such things? She was a unit, a factor – nothing more. If my future were black, it was better surely to face it like a man than to attempt to brighten it by mere will-o’-the-wisps of the imagination.

It was half-past five before Holmes returned. He was bright, eager, and in excellent spirits, a mood which in his case alternated with fits of the blackest depression.

“There is no great mystery in this matter,” he said, taking the cup of tea which I had poured out for him; “the facts appear to admit of only one explanation.”

“What! you have solved it already?”

“Well, that would be too much to say. I have discovered a suggestive fact, that is all. It is, however, very suggestive. The details are still to be added. I have just found, on consulting the back files of the Times, that Major Sholto, of Upper Norwood, late of the Thirty-fourth Bombay Infantry, died upon the twenty-eighth of April, 1882.”

“I may be very obtuse, Holmes, but I fail to see what this suggests.”

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