THE INTERNET AND INTERNATIONAL LAW
Is the internet changing, shaping and developing the public international legal system?
INTRODUCTION
The internet has evolved from just being a search engine where people just look up information to being a tool for providing information about matters that concern the law. The internet greatly differs from other internet technologies, in that it is global. A singe web page’s publications can be viewed all over the world at the same time.
Besides being global, the internet is a cheap platform to share legal information and publications and also participate in legally connected political forums and dialogue. Perrit (1998) asserts that this empowers smaller groups who feel disfavoured within domestic arenas, helping them network and connect to each other across national boundaries, in turn forming and developing NGOs.
This paper seeks to look at the international public law and its development in connection to the internet. It sets out to answer the question: ‘is the internet changing, shaping and developing the public international legal system and if so, how?’ To answer this question, we shall look at the roles, importance, advantages and disadvantages of the internet in the development of public international law, with a supportive case study.
Role of the internet in development of Public International Law
According to Perritt, new international institutions are emerging due to public international law, and these institutions exercise various legal powers, and only allow state parties to participate in legal matters. The need to allow non state parties to participate has arisen, as Non Governmental Organizations NGOs) play an important role in international law.
“It is through NGOs and the ma...
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...he internet to communicate state decisions made within treaties. Furthermore, internet utilized by NGOs improves their work in the invocation and purposeful functions. They do this by constructing on internet information systems connecting the media, rebels, and governments. When infringements of international laws are identified by NGOs, they focus their concentration on this using the internet. They do so through electronic mails and internet pages, and put a spotlight on the violators through blacklists. They also create derivative pressure against those sustaining relations with the violators. An example of this happened with the Organization of Economic Boycott of Myanmar for Human Rights Violations. The pressure for Pepco and others to pull out from Myanmar was facilitated exclusively by NGOs. They intensively utilized the internet to facilitate the boycott.
The author is this article is Kalev Leetaru, he is known as an American internet entrepreneur and academic. He is also a contributor to Foreign Policy, where he discusses current political events worldwide. He was appointed adjunct assistant professor at Georgetown university which is ranked #6 internationally and is an extremely well respected university in Washington DC.
As domestic economies globalize, the line has blurred from where an item is built, where it is sold and where it is serviced. It provides opportunities for individuals in many communities to expand their knowledge and learn about other cultures. Outsourcing has flourished in China and it has enabled its citizens to hone their skills by broadening their education to learn new trades and has created new wealth in a rather lifeless economy. The internet and email has been the main force, for it provides people from all over the world the ability to communicate and learn about each other. The Internet is expanding people’s minds; it facilitates media reform, and to a certain degree may provide legal reform.
We discussed in class how International Organizations have a huge impact on the world. We said in class International Organizations were created to achieve objectives that states cannot achieve on their own. We also talked about what were the main reasons of creating International Organizations. Security and poverty have been the main reasons. Moreover States help to establish International Organizations in order to have a platform to interact with one another, to develop norms, and to cooperate to solve problems.
Evgeny Morozov’s article “Think again: The Internet” describes the expectations people had about the Internet when it first emerged. People expected the Internet to bring a new era of world peace and to shatter the world’s borders. In the author’s eyes, the actual transformation the Internet brought to the world was the simplification of communication, which is available to almost everyone and the emergence of online shopping. His opinion of the Internet is generally negative; he thinks that it is promoting national borders (his example is the access to free books in Norway, which is only available to people residing in Norway, because it is sponsored by the government), which he calls “Splinternet” (Morozov, E. 2010), and that is is killing foreign news due to cutbacks on foreign correspondents.
The main sources of International Law and Public International Law are intellectual treaties, practices, customs, principles and decisions and academic compositions. These sources consist of developing ideologies and judgements that evolve over the course of time. International Law is portrayed as holding the power to build or destroy relations between the countries that function in its name. Even though, International Law is imperfect and is in need of understanding public relations between countries and the governments, it is a promising subject of gathering countries with varying ideologies for mutual
Many roads may be signposted, ‘NGOs’but there is considerable confusion in both literature and among policy makers as to what we mean by NGO all inclusively (Munk1992).There is no one definition or typology of the term NGOs as many of these groups differ in their aims and missions. However there are common features that run through all the definitions and the United Nations in 1959 defined NGOs as, “any international organization which is not established by intergovernmental agreement.” (ECOSOC resolution 288[X], Article 71). In the years that have gone by these organisations have enormously become influential actors on the world stage, thus they are playing major roles in the society enabling to achieve more than the national government and global governance institutions. In this essay the achievements of the NGOs that the governments have failed to attend to and achieve will be discussed at great length.
People are greatly influenced by what others say and do (Cohn, 2012). People communicate online and join in on a social network of nongovernmental organizations, religious and humanitarian groups, human rights associations, consumer protection advocated, environmental activists, and others. People are more informed about these different groups because of the easy access to information. The electronic networks can comment their ideas on events and pressure corporations, and governments. The Internet allows people all over the world to campaign for their cause (Ch. 13).
About the power of the subjects of international law, it is the basic properties, the special legal ability of the subjects that inherited the rights and shoulder the obligations, legal responsibility in international legal relations. Subjects' power includes two aspects, and only when ones get all these two aspec...
"The internet has possibly been society’s biggest game changer. Without physical wires, people around the world can become connected instantly. Information can be spread faster than lightning and new pockets of the internet, with new purposes and effects, pop up every hour. The internet is often seen as something that needs restriction. Through the anonymity of a keyboard, people may be willing to get very nasty with one another where they would not in real life.
Page 2:The Internet is a boundless system used for the individual to enhance, and occasionally consume their internal programming of a daily schedule, their life. It has not only transformed how humans interact and communicate with one another, but has offered a new form of government involvement.
...)). As the society is constantly changing and developing, international law is also in constant development, and with time, it came to reflect the legal relations between non-states such as companies and individuals, as well as relations between states, it is being shaped into a new system which is more involved in the structure of the society itself and not only based on state sovereignty.
Public International law International law contains of rules and principles, which preside over the relations and communication of nations with each other. International Law that is in most other countries referred to as Public International Law concerns itself only with questions of rights among more than a few nations or nations and the citizens or subjects of other nations. In dissimilarity, Private International Law deals with controversies among confidential persons, natural or juridical, arising out of situations having important association to further than one nation. In current years the line up connecting public and private international law have became more and more doubtful. Issues of private international law may also associate issues of public international law and numerous matters of private international law nave considerable meaning for the international group of people of nations. International Law consists of the basic, classic concepts of law in nationwide legal systems, status, property, responsibility, and tort. It also includes substantive law, procedure, process and remedies. International Law is rooted in receipt by the nation states, which comprise the system. Customary law and conventional law are primary sources of international law. Customary international law results when states trail convinced practices usually and time after time out of an intelligence of legal responsibility. Lately the customary law was codified in the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties. Conventional international law derives from international agreements and may obtain any appearance that the constricting parties have the same opinion upon. Agreements may be complete in admiration to any substance except for to the leve...
The Internet is a global network connecting millions of personal, institutional and company computers. The number of computers used by the internet is growing rapidly. The United States is connected with over 100 countries worldwide and linked together to exchange of data, news and opinions. The Internet is decentralized design. This means that there isn't just one computer that stores all of the information from the Internet. There are many independent host servers located throughout the US and the world that store the information made available to the global Internet community.
International law has generally been accepted and respected by the States to be the fundamental element in ensuring peace and diplomacy when dealing with matters concerning international relations. It should be noted that, within international law, there are various subjects who are considered to have international legal personality, to wit: States, international organizations, dependent territories, belligerent groups, multinational enterprises, non-governmental organizations, and individuals (Walter, 2007). However, the rights and obligations of these referenced subjects were considered and developed as international law itself evolved. More specifically, the international rights, duties, and obligations of individuals as subjects of international law were not effectively established until after the 20th century.
The other kind of International Organization (IO) is the NGO which are primarily non-profit private organizations that engage in a variety of international activities (Pease, 2012 p. 4). They are able to particip...