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NATO Enlargement and the NATO-Russian Founding Act: The Interplay of Law and Politics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 January 2008

Extract

Nato enlargement and related processes belong to subject matters in which law has a highly sensitive political content and its implementation is greatly dependent on the political environment. It is asserted that in such areas law is subordinate to political considerations or even that such matters may be outside the domain of international law and lawyers altogether.

Type
Shorter Articles, Comments and Notes
Copyright
Copyright © British Institute of International and Comparative Law 1998

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References

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2. Idem, p.113.

3. The Economist, 12 07 1997, p.21.Google Scholar

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18. However, here one cannot be too categorical. The domestic judicial applicability of legally non-binding international documents depends on a concrete legal system. E.g. the Constitutional Court of Russia has on several occasions referred to UNGA resolutions and OSCE documents. However, as Oleg Tiunov, a judge of the Court, writes, “these documents are used only as the subsidiary means of interpretation of international and domestic law because resolutions of the UNGA and documents of the CSCE are not legally binding”: “On the Use of Decisions of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation in the Teaching of International Law” (1997) 1 Russian Juridical Journal 106.Google Scholar But sometimes such an application of legally non-binding Acts by the Constitutional Court is more than just an interpretation of law in the light of these Acts. The Court has used detailed clauses of legally non-binding instruments in cases when law, either domestic or international, has contained only general principles (see idem, pp.106–108).

There are quite a few authors in Russia who believe that Acts like OSCE documents and the Founding Act, though not treaties strictly speaking, are nevertheless legally binding. So Gennady Ignatenko writes of CSCE Acts as “sources of international law”: International Law (1995), p.98. Yuri Reshetov believes that the NATO–Russian Founding Act is “not simply a declaration of intentions; it is a binding international legal agreement”: “The Legal Character of the Paris Act”, Nezavissimaya Gazeta, 26 June 1997.Google Scholar

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