Under Art. 16 of the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), “Everyone shall have the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.” Both national and international laws provide expanded regulation of different aspects of the personality of individuals as well as protection of different categories of human rights. IT development, however, changes the existing pattern of international relations a lot. As a result, individuals become more and more active actors in the international arena. The paper is devoted to the problem of the international personality of an individual in modern international law. It reviews the notion of international personality and focuses on contemporary challenges and changes in the rights, obligations and competence of individuals. Special attention is paid to the impact this activities carried out in cyberspace have on the status of individuals.

The paper presents the issue of denunciation of international treaties, which contain no provisions on termination. Article 56 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, adopted in 1969, covering the presumption against denunciation from treaties that lack a withdrawal or denunciation clause, specifies two exceptions to the general rule. They are defined in rather abstract terms, resulting in enormous difficulties with their practical application. The lack of clarity of the wording of Article 56 provides for the need to inquire into the matter to identify the concepts, reliance on which will make it possible to avoid unjustified references to the Article in question.

The paper aims at clarifying the legal issues relating to the concepts, conditions, construction procedures, legal status and jurisdiction of the States under the provisions of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (hereinafter UNCLOS). Also, the paper analyses the legal basis and the negative concequences of illegal construction of artificial islands by China on the reefs and low-tide elevations on the Spratly Islands (the Truong Sa Islands) in the South China Sea.

This article outlines components of the United Nations model on juvenile criminal justice. Then it focuses on introducing and evaluating important provisions of Vietnamese criminal procedure law designed for juvenile offenders. The author applies the United Nations norms for juvenile criminal justice as criteria to assess Vietnamese criminal procedure law and make recommendations for legal reform. The findings demonstrate that there is a gap between the Vietnamese criminal procedure law applicable to juvenile offenders and the United Nations benchmark model of juvenile criminal justice, which needs to be narrowed and eliminated in future in order to have effective protection of legitimate rights and interests of juveniles who find themselves in conflict with Vietnamees criminal law.

When the author began practicing law relating to the USSR/ Russia in 1975, the Soviet Union was significantly more advanced economically than China. This was still the situation when he began practicing law relating to China in 1983. When he retired from legal practice in 2006, however, this situation reversed. This article contains his views based on his extensive experience in both countries, on what may have contributed to this remarkable reversal in these countries’ relative economic positions during this short time period.

This article discusses the nature of procedure of amiable composition in international commercial arbitration and analyses the nature of lex mercatoria in the light of this procedure. The author also examines procedural issues of application of lex mercatoria in the course of amiable composition and in the case of usual determination of applicable law.

The paper is devoted to the issue of real estate taxation in the Russian Federation and France. The practice of calculating and controlling payment of taxes on real estate has its own characteristics in European countries: it is more strongly controlled, has a multistage differentiated structure and high rates for large volumes of real estate. It should be emphasised that the real estate tax in the European Union is a national tax provided for by the legislative systems of the states. At the same time, the high level of the legal regulation structure of the taxation system in France hinders the development of an informal shadow business sector to avoid tax evasion.

The scope of regulation of social relations connected with both secular and canon laws are of great interest for the researchers. In particular, these relations are linked to the constitutional presumption of the separation of the church and the state. At the same time, there is a tendency of convergence of the church and the state in matters concerning property, correlation of church and secular education, etc. The clergy by virtue of the nature of their professional duties, mostly deal with private and personal information and it is also a sphere of common interest for both the state and the church. The use of the comparative legal research methods, methods of the analysis and synthesis of the situation have made it possible to match the norms of the canon and secular law and identify some elements of their relations. The main purpose of the article is the comprehensive study of the seal of confession, its conceptual framework, legal regulation, judicial practice, forms and types of responsibility for its violation. This paper examines historical facets of development of the seal of confession, beginning with the Spiritual Regulations and up to the modern ecclesiastical and secular norms. The Spiritual Regulations were specific since they contained no absolute inviolability of the seal of confession as soon as the information concerned the security of higher officials. The paper also highlights the legal framework of the secrecy of the confessional, being some professional religious mystery, on the one hand, as well as a legal mode and a form of some sensitive or restricted information, on the other. The Fundamentals of the Social Concept of the Russian Orthodox Church contain the requirements and tell the priest how to classify the information communicated to him by his parishioner. The article focuses on some features of the seal of confession practice abroad, particularly in Germany and the USA. Eventually, the US laws provide for the circumstances where the communication of the clergy and their parishioners should remain confidential. There are, however, some requirements compelling the priest to report whenever protection of children is involved. The jurisprudence supports the rules regulating the seal of confession. Three relevant cases have been studied by the authors and they involve the separation of secular and religious laws.

This paper explores the issues related to the extraterritorial applicability of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDRP). The author analyses the process of progressive development of the EU law in general and the current state of a general worldwide jurisdiction of the EU regulations in the field of data protection. The author explores different cases in which data administrators from third States would be obliged to comply with the provisions of the GDPR and the possible legal consequences that would follow eventual breaches.