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This chapter considers the status in the U.S. legal system of “executive agreements”—that is, international agreements concluded by the United States outside of the senatorial advice and consent process specified in Article II of the Constitution. After describing the substantial growth during the twentieth century in the number of executive agreements, the chapter focuses in particular on congressional-executive agreements and sole executive agreements. It also considers the extent to which executive agreements are interchangeable with Article II treaties for purposes of domestic law, with respect to the preemption of state law, displacement of federal statutes, and federalism limitations. The chapter further discusses the President’s long-standing use of executive agreements for the settlement of international claims. It concludes with a discussion of the growing phenomenon of non-binding “political” or “soft law” agreements.

This chapter assesses how the understanding of the ‘covenant’ between Humanity, God and the caliph had been transformed by the events of the mid-eighth century. It examines the ‘dispositive documents’ (shart or shurūt) concerning the succession that emanated from the early Abbasid caliphal court. These were written records of the contractual agreements about the succession. In this chapter, the structures and formulas of the agreements of the 802 and 805 are compared with the shart for the succession to al-Mahdi which was drawn in 776, as well as with other similar conditional agreements such as the amans or ‘safe-conducts’. The chapter also presents a commentary of the agreements of 776 and 802/5 and compares the said agreements to determine their formal and structural parallels. The parallels with the amans, the shuru and the commercial papyri are also determined. This analysis is keyed into the six-part structure of the documents. This is then followed by some conclusions about the emergence of this new genre of written public political agreement about the succession.

This chapter examines two nonjusticiable areas that became nonetheless subjected to attempts by the Supreme Court to intervene. Political compacts, such as coalition agreements, comprise one of these areas. The classic Supreme Court held that such agreements remained outside of the court’s jurisdiction, but also made it clear that a political agreement cannot sanction an illicit act. However, in the wake of the legal revolution the Supreme Court began to review political agreements. Another issue that came before the court was the award of prizes by public bodies. Section 33 of the Contracts Law (General Part) states that, in the case of a contract to award a degree or prize according to the decision of one of the sides or a third party, “the decision . . . according to the contract is not a subject for litigation in court.” But this provision likewise did nothing to cool the Supreme Court’s fervor for delving into this issue.

This chapter seeks to answer the question: What internal Cuban legal adjustments are necessary for Cuba to enter into a fully normalized relationship with the United States. and the rest of the world? The chapter first focuses on the adjustments Cuba might have to undertake if it is to embed itself within the structures of global trade and finance. Next, the chapter examines the extent to which Cuba is disposed to consider these possible reforms. Third, it examines what may be possible in the aftermath of the U.S. presidential election of 2016 (and its aftermath) and other global changes, including the emergence of a Chinese alternative to national embedding in global trade. These have considerably changed the terrain within with the consequences of U.S.-Cuba normalization can be considered. The examination considers the value of the European Union’s strategic initiative, the Political Dialogue and Cooperation Agreement (PDCA), as a viable basis for Cuban reintegration in the global economy.

This chapter examines how Abraham Lincoln and Owen Lovejoy traversed an uneven political ground in 1855 to move their respective positions on slavery into almost perfect alignment. It first provides an overview of Lincoln and Lovejoy's political grounding before discussing the political agreement that would allow Lincoln to advance his candidacy for the U.S. Senate and for Lovejoy to find a venue to correct some intentional mischaracterizations of the early Republican Party in Illinois. It also considers the two men's speeches in which they both regarded the repeal of the Missouri Compromise as a big mistake; their contradictory perceptions of the abolitionists; and their disagreement over the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act. The chapter concludes with an assessment of the cautious approach taken by Lovejoy and others in uniting various antislavery groups.

This chapter addresses the greatest threat to basic rights in the twenty-first century: uncontrolled climate change. Climate change is a threat not only to widely acknowledged basic rights but also to all other rights, the protection of which depends on fulfillment of basic rights. The basic right to subsistence is obviously threatened by the global energy regime of fossil fuels. The most dangerous effects for humans of the combustion of fossil fuels come indirectly by way of the dynamics of rapid climate change and the effects of climate change on the fundamental interests that basic rights are intended to safeguard—on none more than on the food at the heart of subsistence. The chapter then highlights the danger that economic and political agreements made by others will make it impossible for ordinary people to provide such elements of subsistence for themselves by trapping them inside social structures that conflict with their fundamental interests. One might say that climate change is a threat that humanity is imposing upon itself.