State and its elements: law
d) law:
Very
broadly, law is a set of rules or norms that govern human behavior. For the
purpose of this series of posts, we only consider national law and
international law when we refer to a sovereign state.
- National law.
- International law.
According
to the traditional view, national law is the set of rules or norms that
regulates the behavior of a group of people within a territory. In other words,
law is an obligation, a permission or a prohibition to do something (or not to
do something). This law is created by someone (an individual, a body, an
institution, representatives) for someone else (POPULATION) and is applicable
within defined borders (TERRITORY).
International
law has to do with rules and norms created because of the relationships between/among
different sovereign states. There are other international agents in addition to
sovereign states. For the purpose of this series, they are not included. For
example, there are daily cases in which supranational organs or institutions create
and apply law that results immediately obligatory for some sovereign states that
fulfil certain criteria Some of these cases include the difference between
European Union regulations and directives; the German constitution of 1949,
art. 25; and the Argentinean constitution after 1994 reform, arts. 31 and
75.22; etc. As a result, law may have internal or external origin and be
considered valid in both cases without altering the notion of State.
So
far, we have introduced the term STATE and its classically accepted components:
population, territory, government and law. All of these elements are necessary
requirements for a state to exist.
The
next posts will center the attention on introducing another key concept in
territorial disputes: SOVEREIGNTY. Once we finish with this simple and basic
introduction of the key concepts STATE (population, territory, government and
law) and SOVEREIGNTY the posts will present territorial disputes individually,
for example the Falkland/Malvinas islands, Crimea, Kashmir, Catalonia,
Gibraltar, the Israel-Palestine difference, the South China Sea, and many
others.
NOTE:
This post is based on Jorge Emilio Núñez, “Territorial Disputes and State
Sovereignty: International Law and Politics,” London and New York: Routledge,
Taylor and Francis Group, 2020 (forthcoming)
Previous
published research monograph about territorial disputes and sovereignty by the
author, Jorge Emilio Núñez, “Sovereignty Conflicts and International Law and
Politics: A Distributive Justice Issue,” London and New York: Routledge, Taylor
and Francis Group, 2017.
NEXT
POST: Sovereignty
Monday 23rd September 2019
Dr Jorge Emilio Núñez
Twitter: @London1701
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