The United Kingdom has left the European Union. While both sides continue to shape their future relationship, Brexit also reveals a distinctly global dimension. The UK government is negotiating ... Show moreThe United Kingdom has left the European Union. While both sides continue to shape their future relationship, Brexit also reveals a distinctly global dimension. The UK government is negotiating “continuity agreements” with countries around the world to replace agreements concluded by the EU, while also aiming to strike new agreements where the EU has failed to do so thus far. At the same time, the EU as a global treaty-maker is not standing still either. This setting provides a fertile ground for a comparative analysis of the performance of both the UK and EU as international treaty negotiators, especially in the area of trade. This chapter argues that such a comparison serves as an unprecedented opportunity for testing some of the core assumptions of both Eurosceptics and proponents of European integration. The assumptions can be grouped under two opposing narratives designated here as “Global Britain” and “Market Power Europe”, respectively. While the former suggests that the UK will be better off “unshackled” from the EU by becoming a more agile and effective international actor, the latter argues that the benefits of being able to rely on the collective economic power of the EU outweigh the costs of heterogeneity of interests and more burdensome decision-making. Comparing the ability of both the EU and UK to conclude trade agreements with partners around the world, and comparing the respective terms accorded to them, will enable researchers to provide insights into the costs and benefits of “non-Europe” on the international stage. However, in order to produce meaningful findings, numerical, normative, relative and cumulative methodological challenges will have to be overcome. Therefore, a new interdisciplinary approach is required that combines rigorous legal analysis with empirical-legal, qualitative, and economic methods to answer a fundamental question: was striking out on its own in the world “worth it” for the first country that left the EU? Show less
International Commercial Surrogacy (ICS) has emerged over the past decade as a modern method of family formation. ICS is unregulated internationally and domestic laws are struggling to keep pace... Show moreInternational Commercial Surrogacy (ICS) has emerged over the past decade as a modern method of family formation. ICS is unregulated internationally and domestic laws are struggling to keep pace with ICS. However, a child is at the centre of every ICS arrangement, and children conceived and born through ICS are at a heightened risk of their rights being infringed.Written over the course of time when ICS has rapidly developed, this book explores why and how the child's rights are at risk in ICS, and seeks to apply the standards and norms of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child to the ICS context. This book proposes approaches for balancing the competing rights and interests of the child and other parties in ICS. It presents a framework for protecting the rights of children born through ICS, illustrating that this is achievable in practice, in the absence of international consensus on ICS as a phenomenon.This book is relevant for child rights practitioners and academics, and useful for policy-makers, legislators and national and international decision-makers grappling with the children’s and human rights issues presented by this 21st century human rights challenge. Show less
