The article is a contemporary analysis in Russian legal literature of the legal regime of the Spitsbergen islands and the adjacent marine areas. The possible interpretations of the Treaty on Spitsbergen of 1920 and relevant rules of general international law are assessed, with special attention to different interpretations suggested by Norway and by other states-parties to the Treaty on Spitsbergen. The Treaty provisions of the “territorial waters of Spitsbergen” and the differences between this treaty mechanism and the traditional law of the sea institute – “territorial sea of coastal state” (of Norway in this case) are considered in detail. The claims of Norway on 200-miles zone and on continental shelf of Norway adjacent to Spitsbergen are considered against the background of the Treaty on Spitsbergen and relevant rules of bilateral agreements between Norway and the USSR/Russia.

Decision of the European Court of Human Rights on inadmissibility of the Bancovic and others application has given rise to many questions on possibility to apply Convention on protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms to the extraterritorial use of force by the States-parties to the Convention. It is deduced in this article that the abovementioned decision is not based on the previous jurisprudence of the conventional bodies, that interpretation of the scope of the convention ratione loci ignores the purposes and a special nature of the convention, and that the Court does not take into account the case-law of the other international human rights bodies. By making reference to the decisions rendered after 2001 the author proves that the European Court of Human Rights has gradually refused from the arguments used in the Bancovic and others decision.

This article considers various aspects of statelessness in Russian Federation. In particular, it covers the history of legislation regarding stateless persons, actual status of stateless persons in Russia. Furthermore the article concisely describes the reasons of statelessness and recommendations to remedy the situation.

The article analyses possible international legal consequences of transferring a part of authority of the state to a supranational body when creating a Customs Union (CU). Besides, a problem of possible changing of international legal personality of the Russian Federation as a participant of CU is investigated taking into account the rights and obligations of the RF appearing from the membership of the RF in international organizations and from the participation of the RF in operating international treaties of corresponding profile. The ways of creation of the treaty-legal basis of CU with third states in conceptual plan are also researched.
Legal mechanism of realization of supranational functions of CU on the territory of participating country from the point of view of the states of the Constitution which concern the state sovereignty has been investigated. In the article ways of correspondence of function and competence of the supranational body of CU with branch laws of the member states of CU are also analyzed.

The border trade is the least investigated treatment of foreign trade activity. In this Article author determines the questions of boarder cooperation of Russia with appointed states, defines status of boarder territories, analyzes European experience of boarder cooperation, makes an analyzes of the basic regulatory documents within the province of trade activity in boarder regions, discovers the main institutional problems of boarder trade relations and suggests the ways to solve these problems by improvement of existing legislation.

The article examines different theories, which were proposed in Western European literature for explanation of the notion of internationally mandatory rules (art.1192, Russian Civil Code). The content, advantages and disadvantages of the following theories are analyzed: theory of strictly territorial application of public law rules, special connection theory, theory of the proper law of contract, theory of taking internationally mandatory rules into consideration as facts of the case, as well as theory of special multilateral conflict of law rules. The author does not recommend using different criteria in order to determine the opportunity of taking into consideration the internationally mandatory rules of lex contractus, on the one hand, and internationally mandatory rules of third states, on the other hand. The author comes to conclusion that the most promising are the special connection theory and the theory of taking internationally mandatory rules into consideration as facts of the case, as well as their combination, which provides opportunity of application of one or another internationally mandatory rule on two consecutive levels – the level of international private law and substantive law level.

The current state of international legal regulation of international environmental relations, when rapidly augmenting normative array does not lead to real improvement of ecological situation in the world urgently calls for the need of serious reform of international environmental law, especially with regard to enhancing the effectiveness of existing mechanisms of environmental cooperation among states and the establishment of new mechanisms for such cooperation. In this paper the authors justify the need to establish a World environmental organization, to work out a unified international legal ecological act (World Environmental Constitution) and to found an International environmental court to solve urgent ecological issues.

Partial agreements are not expressly mentioned by the Council of Europe Statute but there are a number of resolutions that contain provisions giving the content of the partial agreement but not its definition. In legal theory this question is treated differently by foreign and Russian scholars. In our view, partial agreement of the Council of Europe is a particular form of cooperation between States within the Council of Europe which operates on the basis of the Committee of Ministers’ resolution in a particular sphere and that concerns only some member States of the Council of Europe. Apart from partial agreements there are enlarged partial agreements (agreements between several Council of Europe member states and non-European countries) and enlarged agreements (agreements between all Council of Europe member states and non-European countries).
The Venice Commission of the Council of Europe is an example of partial agreement that has evaluated into an enlarged agreement (the only one in the Council of Europe), where all CoE member-states participate as well as non-European countries such as Brazil, Korea, Kazakhstan, South Africa, Palestinian National Authority and others.

The article appears to be an attempt to decipher such notions as “International Energy Law” and “Energy Law of the European Communities”. The author considers it is too early to speak about a separate branch of law or separate system of legal norm as International Energy Law or Energy Law of the European Communities, although they could appear in the future following further development of the international treaties in the energy sphere. At the modern stage it could be useful to study and teach “international and EC energy law” as a separate academic discipline.

The article deals with the issue of modernization of public relations in the orientation of interaction, consolidation, consensus of state and local administrations in subjects of the Russian Federation, Russia, another country-members of CIS, states of eastern and western Europe. Interpretation of factors and means of modernization of local administration is offered. Conclusions of necessity of transition from crisis and post crisis effects to modernization development of administration are made.

The Author on the example of Latin monetary union and of the Paris monetary conference of 1867 shows the stages through which the states had gone from unilateral and bilateral to multilateral modes of regulation of the international finance system. In the beginning of the XIX century England dominated in world economy and tried to ensure for English pound sterling the role of «world currency». England by its unilateral act of 1816 fixed gold standard of the pound sterling. In response France initiated the creation of the international organization - the Latin monetary union in order to develop the positions the French franc in the world finance system.
In 1867 Napoleon III called the International monetary conference in Paris which decided, that all national currencies would have the gold basis. This system had been existed till the First World War. Latin monetary union and Paris International currency system were start points for the creation and development of norms and institutes of International Finance Law.

The book has been prepared on the initiative of the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE/ODIHR), the Council of Europe, OHCHR and UNESCO). The volume holds long and unique experience of these international organizations in creating and developing human rights education system.