Brill Online

One of the unavoidable consequences of wars and other conflicts is the resulting flow of refugees who flee for a variety of reasons: risk of persecution, threats to the civilian population, the general situation of instability and despair, and others. World War II (WWII) resulted in some 60 million refugees in Europe. The consequences of Russian aggression in Ukraine have beaten the records of refugee flows since WWII with almost eight million refugees from Ukraine seeking protection in Europe as of the end of January 2023 and around six million internally displaced persons within Ukraine. This chapter aims to dwell on the legal protection of refugees back in the 1940s and now, some 80 years later, by analysing the availability, scope and approach to legal protection in these two important historical periods. Refugees from the Baltic States in the 1940s are considered as a case study in the chapter along with the contemporary flow of Ukrainians in Europe. There is little research on the legal protection of Baltic refugees from WWII, while the Ukrainian refugee flow and the protection solution applied is relatively new, which means that analysis of the approach to their legal status is relevant from the legal research and history of law point of view.

This paper explores Soviet deportations of Lithuanian citizens during occupations in 1940–1941 and 1944–1952 in the framework of a genocidal act as listed in Article ii, (c) of the 1948 Genocide Convention—deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part. The focus of this paper is on the nature of Soviet deportations and the evaluation of two types of Soviet deportations from the perspective of legal elements indicated by Article ii, (c) of the Genocide Convention; including targeted persons, premeditation and principal mechanisms.

On 30 January 2019 the Council of Europe adopted guidelines on electronic evidence in civil and administrative law (hereinafter “the Guidelines”). The article summarizes and analyses this soft law instrument and explains why its creation is important for the proper administration of justice and how it addresses and reflects technological developments, new business models and evolving case-law. Several conclusions have been identified regarding how use of the Guidelines will address current practical problems for courts and attorneys while maintaining full compliance with important principles like the right to a fair trial, protection of private life and national laws of the member states.

Republic of Lithuania Materials on International Law 2017 (RLMIL2017) are drafted and classified pursuant to Recommendation (97)11 of 12 June 1997 of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe. 2. For the ease of reading a number of abbreviations are used in RLMIL2017, namely ECHR – Convention for Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, 1950; ECtHR – ECtHR; Seimas – Parliament of the Republic of Lithuania; Government – Government of the Republic of Lithuania. Unless explicitly provided for otherwise, references to cases or decisions in RLMIL2017 are references to acts of national courts and institutions. Cases decided by national courts referred to herein are available in Lithuanian free of charge at the following websites: www.lat.lt (Case-law of the Supreme Court), www.lvat.lt (Case-law of the Supreme Administrative Court). Most of the case-law of the Constitutional Court is available on its website http://www.lrkt.lt/index_e.html. Case-law of the European Court of Human Rights is available through the website http://www.echr.coe.int/echr/. Bilateral agreements of Lithuania are mostly available in Lithuanian at the following website: www.lrs.lt. Universal and regional international instruments mentioned in RLMIL2017 do not bear any reference to their source, as may be easily accessed from various pages on the internet. Due to limited scope, the RLMIL2017 does not reproduce entire texts, therefore certain information is omitted and marked as […]. 3. RLMIL2017 consists mainly from translations of texts made by the authors; therefore, translations shall not be regarded as official and shall be used for information purposes only. Documents the translations of which are provided by national institutions and are available in English on the internet are attached with a particular link. 4. A rather technical remark shall be made in regard to ratifications of Seimas and approvals of Government, noted in Appendix hereto, meaning expression of consent to be bound under national law, rather than meaning of international act, attributed to the notion “ratification” in the Article 2 part 1(b) of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, 1969.

When it comes to climate litigation, environmental plaintiffs in the United States have demonstrated a remarkable ingenuity in terms of utilizing various legal avenues to compensate for the persisting regulatory gaps. In the last few years, the public trust doctrine and constitutional law have been present among these, in an attempt to put the risks associated with climate change on the map of human rights in relation to the environment and natural resources. However, despite a nationwide occurrence of such lawsuits, courts have been cautious in their approach to them. Similar lawsuits have emerged outside the United States, in Europe and Asia, demonstrating some viability. This analysis addresses the recent litigation in Pennsylvania, where petitioners asked the court to order the state government to take action on climate change and to declare such action a constitutional obligation under the state's Constitution