It was raised earlier this summer at the Hague Conference, an intergovernmental organization of 47 nations on private international law.

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Those commitments are a beginning, HRW says, but it wants additional steps, including minimum employee standards in line with Qatari law and international labor standards for private contractors involved in World Cup-related construction.

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The Alien Tort Statute, enacted as part of the Judiciary Act of 1789, permits federal courts to recognize private claims in for a limited number of international law violations.

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By contrast, the Obama executive order strips away those limitations, granting the international law enforcement agency blanket immunity from official and private efforts to assess its activities in the United States.

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One second year law and international relations student said it was deplorable that private firms could make profit from student tuition fees.

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At least according to a source quoted by National Geographic, namely the International Institute of Space Law, that treaty does indeed apply to private citizens as well as the countries they live in.

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There is no law against private stem cell research in the US, but Mr Bush has called for an international United Nations ban on all human cloning, prompting ire from a number of countries which allow the process under regulated conditions for research purposes.

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Even though Article 1 of the U.S. Constitution allows Congress to issue Letters of Marque, they were forbidden in the 1856 Paris Declaration, which as been accepted as customary international law. (Theodore Richard produced an excellent journal paper on this topic analyzing the use of private security providers for piracy).

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