Location of EU institutions

The EU has no official capital and its institutions are divided between several cities:

• Brussels, Belgium - Considered the de facto capital of the EU
• Seat of the European Commission and the Council of the European Union
• Venue for the European Parliament's committee meetings and mini-sessions
• Host city for all European Council summits (since 2004)

• Strasbourg, France
• Seat of the European Parliament and venue of its twelve week-long plenary sessions each year
• Also the location of two key European organisations — the Council of Europe and the European Court of Human Rights — which are different from the EU and have a wider membership than the EU

• Luxembourg City, Luxembourg
• Seat of the European Court of Justice and the Secretariat of the European Parliament
• Seat of the European Investment Bank

• Frankfurt, Germany
• Seat of the European Central Bank

• The Hague, The Netherlands
• Seat of EUROPOL (the European Police Office)

Dwell on the Topic 3

What Is L aw?

Law is a body of official rules and regulations. It is generally found in constitutions, legislations and judicial decisions. Law is used to govern society and to control the behavior of its members. The nature and functions of law have varied throughout history. In modern societies, some authorized body such as a legislature or a court makes the law. It в supported by the coercive power of the state, which enforces the law by means of appropriate penalties or remedies.

Formal legal rules and actions are usually distinguished from other means of social control and guides for behavior such as morality, public opinion, and custom or tradition. Of course, a lawmaker may respond to public opinion or other pressures, and a formal law may prohibit what is morally unacceptable.

Law serves a variety of functions. Laws against crimes, for example, help to maintain a peaceful, orderly, relatively stable society. Courts contribute to social stability by resolving disputes in a civilized fashion, Property and contract laws facilitate business activities. Laws limit the powers of government and help to provide some degree of freedom that would not otherwise be possible. Law has also been used as a mechanism for social change; for instance, at various times laws have been passed to improve the quality of individual life in matters of health, education, and welfare.

Law is frequently classified into areas of public and private law.

Public lawincludes those bodies of law that affects the public generally.

Private law includes the areas of the law that are concerned with the relationships between individuals.

Public law may be divided into 4 general categories:

- Constitutional law, concerns with rights, power and duties of federal and state governments under the Constitution;

- Administrative law,concerns with the multitude of administrative agencies;

- Civil law, concerns civil or private rights and remedies;

- Criminal law, consists of statutes that forbid certain conduct as being detrimental to the welfare of the state or the people generally and provides punishment for their violation.

Private law is that body of law that pertains to the relationships between individuals in an organized society. Private law encompasses the subject of contracts, torts and property.

Constitutional Law

Constitutional law is the body of rules, doctrines and practices that govern the operation of political communities. In modern society the most important political communities became the national states. Modern constitutional law is the offspring of national policy of the state as well as of the idea that the state must protect certain fundamental rights of the individual. As national states have multiplied in number, so have constitutions and with them the body of constitutional law. But constitutional law originates today sometimes from non-national sources too, while the protection of individual rights has become the concern also of supranational institutions.

In the broadest sense a constitution is a body of rules governing the affairs of an organized group. A parliament, a church congregation, a social club, or a trade union may operate under the terms of a formal written document labeled constitution. This does not mean that all of the rules of the organization are in the constitution, for usually there are many other rules such as bylaws and customs. Invariably, by definition, the rules spelled out in the constitution are considered to be basic, in the sense that, until they are modified according to an appropriate procedure, all other rules must conform with them. Thus the presiding officer of a club is obliged to rule that a proposal is out of order if it is contrary to a provision of its constitution. Implicit in the concept of a constitution is that of a higher law that takes precedence.

Every political community, and thus every national state, has a constitution, at least in the sense that it operates its important institutions according to some fundamental body of rules. In this sense of the term the only conceivable alternative to a constitution is a condition of anarchy. Constitutions may be written or unwritten; they may be complex or simple; they may provide for vastly different patterns of governance. Even if the only rule that matters is the whim of an absolute dictator, that may be said to be the constitution.

The constitution of a political community is therefore composed, in the first place, of the principles determining the agencies to which the task of governing the community is entrusted and their respective powers. In absolute monarchies, such as the Oriental kingdoms and the Roman Empire in antiquity and the French monarchy between the 16th and 18th centuries, all sovereign powers were concentrated in one person, the king or emperor, who exercised them directly or through subordinate agencies that had to act according to his instructions. In ancient republics, such as Athens and Rome, the constitution provided, as do the constitutions of most modern states, for a distribution of powers among distinct agencies. But whether it concentrates or distributes these powers, a constitution always contains at least the rules that define the structures and operations of the government that runs the community. The constitution of a political community may contain more, however, than the definition of the authorities endowed with powers to command. It may also include principles that delimit those powers in order to secure against them fundamental rights of persons or groups.

Today, almost all states have constitutional documents describing the fundamental organs of the state, the ways they should operate, and, usually, the rights they must respect and even sometimes the goals they ought to pursue. Notwithstanding great differences among themselves, the constitutional charters of contemporary states are all similar at least in one respect: they are meant to express the core of the constitutional law governing their respective countries.

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Administrative Law

Administrative law is a branch of law regulating the powers, procedures, and acts of public administration. It applies to the organization, powers, duties and functions of public officials and public agencies of all kinds. Its development is connected with the functions of government and with the legal support of governmental bodies.

There are four types of powers delegated to administrative authorities by modern regulatory statutes: (1) the rulemaking power, or the power to issue general rules and regulations having the force of law for the purpose of filling up the details of statutory policy; (2) the licensing power, or the power to grant or refuse, to renew, and to revoke licenses or permits that may be required by statute for the pursuit of such professions as law and medicine and the conduct of certain forms of business; (3) the investigatory power, or the power to require witnesses to testify and produce books, papers, and records for the purpose of acquiring the information, needed for effective regulation; and (4) the directing power, or the power to issue, usually after notice and an opportunity to be heard, administrative orders by which a private party is required, in conformity with the governing statute, to do or refrain from doing specified things.

Whatever the public-service and control functions of the administrative system may be, their performance depends upon the conduct of everyday auxiliary operations: the management of personnel, financing, planning, and so on. Accordingly, the law must also establish rules to authorize and govern the auxiliary managerial operations and the relations that the administrative system is to bear, with respect to the actions of other bodies of the power.

In the broad sense, the problem of administrative law is an aspect of the main problem of political theory: the reconciliation of the authority and liberty. If being more concrete, the purposes of legal control of public administration are:

(1) to set administrative authorities and enable them to carry out public policies aimed to protection of the public interests, and

(2) to protect private interests against administrative interference or excess of power.

It is important to remember, that public interest includes the welfare of all members of the community, those who are regulated no less than those for whose regulation protection is undertaken. Accordingly, the public interest itself suffers if those who are regulated become victims of administrative oppression. Yet it is equally true that the private interest of those who are regulated is included in common public interest.

The aim of administrative law is thus to attain a synthesis of public and private interests in terms of the social and economic circumstances and ideals of the age.

Administrative law has a valuable power to act as an instrument for controlling the bureaucracy.

Under social-democratic regimes, political and judicial control of administration are regarded as complementary but effective ones. Political control is connected with questions of policy and the responsibility of the executive power for administrative activity and expenditures. Judicial control implies making inquiries about particular cases of complaint. Administrative law does not involve the control of the ministers’ functions or the work of the Prime Minister or the President. One of the principal functions of administrative law is to ensure efficient economical and legal administration.

It can be asserted that in all states, irrespective of their economic and political system or of their stage of development, governments are seeking the ways of achieving a high rate of economic growth and high income for the people. All of them are pursuing the goals of modernization, urbanization, and industrialization. They try to provide the major social services, especially education and public health at as high standards as possible. But the level of public expectation is much higher now. The governments are expected not only to maintain order in all spheres of life, but also to achieve progress . There is a widespread belief that wise and well-directed governmental actions can abolish poverty, prevent unemployment, raise the standard of living of the nation, and bring about rapid social development.

Dwell on the Topic 5

Contract Law

The law of contracts considers such questions as: whether a contract exists, its meaning, whether a contract has been broken, and what compensation is due the injured party.

Contract law is the product of a business civilization. It will not be found in precommercial societies. Most primitive societies have other ways of enforcing the commitments оf individuals; for example, through ties of kinship or by the authority of religion. In an economy based on barter, most transactions are self enforcing because the transaction is complete for both sides at the same moment.

Problems may arise if the goods exchanged are later found to be defective, but these problems will be subjects of property law rather than contract law.

Even when transactions do not take the form of barter, primitive societies continue to work with notions of property rather than of promise. In early forms of credit transactions, kinship ties secured the debt, as when a tribe or a community gave hostages until the debt was paid. Other forms of security took the form of pledging land or pawning an individual into a ‘debt slavery’. Some credit arrangements were essentially self-enforcing: livestock, for example, might be entrusted to a caretaker who received for his services a fixed percentage of the offspring. In other cases — constructing a hut, clearing a field, or building a boat — enforcement of the promise to pay was more difficult but still was based on concepts of property. In other words, the claim for payment was based not on the existence of a bargain or promise but on the unjust detention of another's money or goods. When a worker sought to obtain his wages, the tendency was to argue in terms of his right to the product of his labor.

A true law of contracts, that is, of enforceable promises, implies the development of a market economy. Where a commitment's value does not vary with time, ideas of property and injury are adequate and there will be no enforcement of an agreement if neither party has performed, since in property terms no wrong has been done. In a market economy, on the other hand, a person may seek a commitment today to be protected from a change in value tomorrow; the person obtaining such a commitment feels harmed by the fact that the market value differs from the agreed price.

Traditional contract law developed rules and principles controlling the voluntary assumption of obligations, regulating the performance of obligations assumed, and providing sanctions for failure to perform.

Modern commercial practice relies to a growing extent on arbitration to handle disputes, especially those that arise in international transactions. There are several reasons for the growing use of arbitration. The procedure is simple, it is more expeditious, and it may be less expensive than traditional litigation. The arbitrators are frequently selected by a trade association or business group for their expert understanding of the issues in the dispute. The proceedings are private, which is advantageous when the case involves trade or business secrets. In many legal systems, the parties can authorize arbitrators to base their decision on equitable considerations that the law excludes. Finally, when the parties represent different countries, an international panel of arbitrators may offer more guarantee of impartiality than would a national court. Despite these advantages of arbitration, the development of contract law may suffer considerably from withdrawals from the courts of litigation, involving some of the most significant and difficult problems of nowadays because the arbitral awards are usually made in private.

Dwell on the Topic 6

Arbitration

Arbitration has been used for the settlement of disputes between members of trade associations and different exchanges in the securities and commodities trade. Form of contracts contains a standard arbitration clause referring to the arbitration rulesof the respective organization.

For at least a century, arbitration has been the dominant force in dispute resolution in areas such as shipping, commodities and construction. You can opt for a neutral forum and have a panel of three arbitrators, one chosen by each party, and the third (the chairman) chosen either by the parties or the two party-appointed arbitrators. In addition, you can keep your disputes away from the public eye, because arbitration takes place in private, unlike litigation in the court.

The main centers for international arbitration are: Paris, London, Geneva, Stockholm, New York, Hong Kong and Singapore. Which one is used depends on the background and businesses of the parties. Stockholm, for example, was always the place for arbitrating east-west trade disputes. London for shipping and commodities. Singapore looks set for a busy time in the coming months and years after the Asian financial crisis. These locations, the arbitration centers and lawyers working there, compete intensely. Arbitration bodies try hard to get their standard arbitration clause put into people's contracts, so they have a captive market once disputes arise. They do this by publicizing their activities and their rules.

What they are looking for is 'name recognition'. In Europe, Paris (home of the International Chamber of Commerce and its rules) probably has the best name recognition, followed by London (home of the London Court of International Arbitration), and Geneva.

What people look for in an arbitration is speed, cost effectiveness, confidentiality and reliability of the arbitrators and hence their decisions. The choice of venue involves a complex balancing of a number of factors:

- the availability of good experienced arbitrators;

- the availability of good experienced arbitration lawyers, and expert witnesses such as accountants and engineers;

- the cost of these people;

- the support or otherwise that the local legal system gives to arbitration.

- accessibility - basic things like flight access, good facilities (some of the best are now in the Gulf states), administrative back-up, good telecommunications, IT support and even climate.

National legislation also has to lend its support to such an important economic activity as arbitration.

Procedure. The method of selecting arbitrators is an important aspect of the arbitration process, for the arbitrator's ability and fairness is the decisive element in any arbitration. The general practice is for both parties to select an arbitrator at the time a conflict arises or at the time the arbitration agreement is concluded. The two arbitrators then select a chairman, forming a tribunal. Selection of arbitrators is also often made by agencies administering commercial arbitration tinder reestablished rules of procedure. The parties may either make their own selection or entrust the appointment of the arbitrators to the organization.

Challenges to the arbitration process are not uncommon. A party may claim, for example, that no valid arbitration agreement came into existence because the person signing the agreement had no authority to do so or that a condition precedent to arbitration had not been fulfilled. More often, arbitration is contested on the ground that the specific controversy is not covered by the agreement. In such cases, the issue of whether the arbitrator has authority to deal with the conflict is usually determined bya court.

The arbitration process is governed by the laws to which the parties referred in their agreement; otherwise, the procedure will be determined by the arbitrators. The arbitration proceedings must be conducted so as to afford the parties a fair hearing on the basis of equality. The arbitrator generally has the authority to request the parties and third persons to produce documents to enforce such a request by issuing subpoenas. If a party fails to appear at a properly convened hearing, without showing a legitimate cause, the arbitrator in most instances will proceed in the absence of that party and render an award after investigation of the matter in dispute.

Under the law and arbitration practice of most countries, the award is valid and binding upon the parties when rendered by a majority of the arbitrators

Dwell on the Topic 7

International Law

International Law contains principles and rules of conduct that nations regard as binding upon them and, therefore, are expected to and usually do observe in their relations with one another. International law is the law of the international community.

The need for some principles and rules of conduct between independent states arises whenever such states enter into mutual relations. Rules governing the treatment of foreign traders, travelers, and ambassadors, as well as the conclusion and observance of treaties, developed early in human history. The oldest known treaty, preserved in an inscription on a stone monument, is a peace treaty between two Sumerian city-states, dating from about 3100 ВС.

Even more than other ancient people, the Romans made significant contributions to the evolution of international law. They developed the idea of a jus gentium, a body of laws designed to govern the treatment of aliens subject to Roman rule and the relations between Roman citizens and aliens. They were the first people to recognize in principle the duty of a nation to refrain from engaging in warfare without a just cause and to originate the idea of a just war.

Modern international law emerged as the result of the acceptance of the idea of the sovereign state, and was stimulated by the interest in Roman law of the 16th century.

International law stems from three main sources: treaties and international conventions, customs and customary usage, and the generally accepted principles of law and equity. Judicial decisions rendered by international tribunals and domestic courts are important elements of the law-making process of the international community. United Nations resolutions now may also have a great impact on the growth of the so-called customary international law that is synonymous with general principles of international law.

The present system of international law is based on the sovereign state concept. It is within the discretion of each state, therefore, to participate in the negotiation of, or to sign or ratify, any international treaty. Likewise, each member state of an international agency such as the UN is free to ratify any convention adopted by

that agency.

Treaties and conventions were, at first, restricted in their effects to those countries that ratified them. They are particular, not general, international law; yet regulations and procedures contained in treaties and conventions have often developed into general customary usage, that is, have come to be considered binding even on those states that did not sign and ratify them. Customs and customary usages otherwise become part of international law because of continued acceptance by the great majority of nations, even if they are not embodied in a written treaty instrument. Generally accepted principles of law and justice fall into the same category and are, in fact, often difficult to distinguish from customs.

Since the beginning of the 19th century, international conferences have played an important part in the development of the international system and the law.

At the end of World War I the League of Nations was established by the covenant signed in 1919 as part of the Treaty of Versailles. Pursuant to provisions in this covenant, the permanent Court of International Justice was established in 1921. The League of Nations was created as a permanent organization of independent states for the purpose of maintaining peace and preventing war. During its existence 63 countries were members of the League at one time or another.

The League of Nations was the forerunner of the United Nations. The UN began its life with a membership of 50 nations. There are 191 Member States in the UN now. The aims and purposes of this organization encompass the maintenance of peace and security and the suppression of acts of aggression.

International law regulates intercourse among nations in peacetime and provides methods for the settlement of disputes by means other than war. Apart from procedures made available by the UN, these methods include direct negotiation between disputants under the established rules of diplomacy, the rendering of good offices by a disinterested third party, and recourse to the International Court of Justice. Other peacetime aspects of international law involve the treatment of foreigners and of foreign investments; the acquisition and loss of citizenship; and status of stateless persons; the extradition of fugitives; the privileges and duties of diplomatic personnel.

Dwell on the Topic 8