Natural Right theory: Labour Theory (Locke’s Theory)

Property right is a natural right. A person has a right to own the creation of his mind in the same manner he owns creation of his labour. When a person is deprived of what he has created he becomes.

At the beginning, everything was common but by using labour /intellect/ it has become private. We need to protect somebody’s labour because it is a natural right. So, it may take to conclude that intellectual property rights are natural rights.

The problem is that natural right theory doesn’t cope with the temporal limitation of intellectual property rights. It is true that temporal limitation is applicable to intellectual property. Intellectual property is most of the time limited in time as to the protection accorded by law. This theory may be justifiable for corporeal ownership in which its existence may be for indefinite period of time. In intellectual property, however, after lapse of a certain time the work will be part of the public domain.

Nothing can be called with greater prosperity man’s property than the fruits of his labour. The property in any article or reason of his own mechanical labour is never denied him; the labor of his mind is no less worth of the protection of the law.

A person has a natural right to the fruits of her labour and that this should be recognized as her property, whether in tangible or intangible term.

John Locke has two theses.  1) Everyone has property right in the labour of his own body. The labour of his body and the work of his hands are properly his. 2) The appropriation of an unowned object (ideas or theories) arises out of application of human labour to that object. Mixing one’s own labour with unowned thing confers upon a property right in the whole thing. However, after appropriation there must remain objects of similar quality in sufficient quantity for others: “Enough and as good left for other.”

Personality Theory

Intellectual property rights are important to create personal self assertion. As propounded by Hegel, a person would be more self assertive when she/he owns property. He will feel more equal (equality). He will be freer. It is believed that the work is the personal expression of the author’s or the inventor’s thoughts. So he should be given the right to decide when and how his work may be produced or performed in public, and the right to prevent mutilations and changes. Intellectual property laws are to be there to protect the author’s or the inventor’s manifestation of his personality. This is also backed by the need for the safeguarding of the individual’s freedom of expression.

Utilitarian Theory

What do Intellectual Property Rights do? They make the public good a private, a non rivalorous – rivalorous and the non-exclusive – exclusive, and the non-scarce scarce which are not scarce by nature. The laws create artificial scarcity of knowledge. This is because creators do not have the necessary incentive unless they have accorded some means to control their knowledge. Unless this is done, they lack the necessary economic incentive. This is called utilitarian theory of intellectual property.

Utilitarian is institution socially beneficial. It states that we have intellectual property systems because it has the effect on the betterment /economic/ of the society. Its correctness is to be assessed in the economic success of the countries. So, it is more of an economic issue. We have witnessed tremendous technological advancements both in the science and the arts.  The question is: would it be possible without intellectual property systems? According to this theory, you do something because you will get something. Why should we care about creations of society? Society should care about its creators because the ultimate beneficiary is the society itself because they give solution to technical problems.

Such theory has never been successful as we would expect them to be. There is an objection from economists. When intellectual property is given exclusive rights, according to them, it is a creation of a monopoly right. Monopoly is contradistinguished with a perfectly competitive market. If monopoly is unrestricted it will result in market crush. How does intellectual property right create monopoly? How do antitrust organizations fight monopoly?

There are arguments counterfeiting this. Whenever the law gives an exclusive right to the innovator, the right holder is not enabled to control the problem. There are so many ways of resolving a problem. That means there is no intellectual property law which prohibits other innovators from innovating a solution to the same problem. This is not sound in copyrights since they protect expression of ideas.

Patent for a drug for a certain illness does not prohibit innovating another drug for the same illness. However, each monopolizes their right until another comes. So, the monopolistic nature is undeniable. That is why governments try to control such monopolization.

What if design law does not exist? Some say without intellectual properties, designers will not engage in such business and then a given society may not promote cultures. There is a counter argument for the monopolization of a patent. The economic incentives given to an inventor enforce another person to invent around the patented idea. It stimulates others to develop an alternative solution because of the monopolization of the patented idea. So it induces inventing around an existing patent.

There is a counter argument to this, i.e., if we end up in giving different solutions to the same problem, it will result in economic waste since there are different problems which we have to give solutions to.

The other version of utilitarian theory is incentive (bargain) theory. The protection given to intellectual property is an incentive to individuals not only to create works of the mind but also to publicize and disseminate them into the public. It is to encourage creativity and publicity. Works of the mind are very important to a given society for its social, cultural and economic development.

Through literature development, the cultural orientation of a given country will be promoted. Invention promotes industrialization. Development of the west has to do much with intellectual creativity.

Those works require investment in terms of time, money and effort. So without protection people will not invest on them. They are no less investment demanding than corporeal thing and the protection of the law is needed. In addition, creativity by itself is not adequate. If the work of a mind is not made available to the public, that is not useful. With protection publicity will be encouraged thereby enabling their publicity and serve their intended purpose. Upon the expiry of their period of protection the public will start to use the properties. When right is protected then the creator will make his work to be known. Without protection people may not make their works known. The state is bargaining with individuals.

Do intellectual properties really stimulate innovation? Are not there any stimulators other than intellectual property rights? It is a controversial issue.

The other question is: does the theory really work? Numerous assertions are made. There are factors other than intellectual property rights which stimulate innovation.

Before the existence of intellectual property rights there were innovations. Some say, even great works of the mind are created without the existence of protection. As an example, we can take Shakespeare’s writings. What incentives encouraged these people? What they are saying is there are born creators, who continue creating even without protection. People create for different reasons: to satisfy their natural urge, necessity, fame… Some writers say copyright is unnecessary restriction on the public favor of the author. For them, when there is shortage, a better system is needed and creativity follows even without legal protection.

However, the critics must be seen seriously in light of the world’s development. In older days, people may write books because violation itself is very difficult, there were no printing machines, no mechanism of dissemination, no recording machines for reproduction and distribution.

In history, works of the literature were even limited to certain groups, elites of the church. These days, however, the situation the changed. The critics on incentive theory will not work firmly today.

Objections to incentive and reward theory may be summarized as:

The need to pay the rights owner a royalty or fee may increase the price of the product or service to which intellectual property right relates. It can be seen as a kind of tax on knowledge and information.

Even if consumers are prepared to pay the prices charged by the right owners, the latter may not meet the demands of the public in sufficient quantities. This will lead to compulsory license.

The grant of rights has little positive effect in promoting investment that is required for the production of new inventions, technical innovation, literary and artistic productions and the like.

Whilst no monopolies in the strict sense are applied by economists, intellectual property rights have the potential to be used to anti-competitive effect, particularly where they are pooled together or used as a lever to obtain other ends.

Intellectual property rights can be used to suppress free speech and access to information.

Regarding issues related to intellectual property rights, we have attached the following different materials written by different scholars. Please read them critically.

Intellectual Property in General

The division of property as movable and immovable, if it is tangible, was known in Roman law and has been adopted by modern Civil Codes. This kind of classification is also provided under art.1226 of the Civil Code. However, “as a result of the industrial revolution and the rapid development made in the fields of science, technology and culture, new kinds of property came into existence”. New rights and properties like patents, copyright and industrial designs, which came to be known as intellectual property rights (IPRs) received attention due to their unique characteristics.

Intellectual property is so broad that it has many aspects. It stands for groupings of rights which individually constitute distinct rights. However, its conception differs from time and it to time. It is subject to various influences. The change in information technology, market reality (globalization) and generality have affected the contents of intellectual property. For instance, in olden days-because of religion creation of life, say plants or animals were not protected. Thus, defining IP is difficult as its conception changes. It is diverse, challenging and has application in own day today life.

IP is a section of law which protects creations of the mind, and deals with intellectual creations. Is it a workable definition? It is also commonly said that one cannot patent or copyright ideas.

Intellectual property, as a concept, “was originally designed to cover ownership of literary and artistic works, inventions (patents) and trademarks”. What is protected in intellectual property is the form of the work, the invention, the relationship between a symbol and a business. However, the concept of intellectual property now covers patents, trademarks, literary and artistic works, designs and models, trade names, neighboring rights, plant production rights, topographies of semi conductor products, databases, when protected by a sui generis right, unfair competition, geographical indications, trade secrets, etc.

Those types of intellectual property have been characterized as “pieces of information which can be incorporated in tangible objects at the same time in an unlimited number of copies at different time and at different locations anywhere in the world”. In other words, intellectual property rights are intangible in nature, different from the objects they are embodied in. The property right is not in those copies but in the information which creates in them.

In today’s world, the international dimension of intellectual property is of ever increasing importance for three compelling reasons. First, the composition of world trade is changing. Currently, commerce in intellectual property has become an even greater component of trade     between nations. The value of information products has been enhanced greatly by the new technologies of the semi-conductor chip, computer   software and biotechnology. Second, the world commerce has become even more interdependent, establishing a need for international cooperation. No longer can a single country impose its economic will on the rest of the world. Accordingly, countries have recognized this interdependence and have called for a broadening of international agreements/arrangements involving intellectual property. Third, new reprographic and information storage technologies permit unauthorized copying to take place faster and more efficiently than  ever, undermining the creator’s work. There is a general feeling in the developed countries that much of this sort of copying takes place in the third world due to the relaxation of legal standards. All these factors have prompted the international community as a whole to accord due recognition to intellectual property and intellectual property regime.

Thus, the above reasons widen the scope of intellectual property rights. Among the bundles of intellectual property rights, copyright that deals with the protection of literary, artistic and scientific works is one.

The Concept of Intellectual Property

Intellectual property, very broadly, means the legal property which results from intellectual activity in the industrial, scientific and artistic fields. Countries have laws to protect intellectual property for two main reasons. One is to give statutory expression to the moral and economic rights of creators in their creations and such rights of the public in access to those creations. The second is to promote, as a deliberate act of government policy, creativity and the dissemination and application of its results and to encourage fair trading which would contribute to economic and social development.

Generally speaking, IP law aims at safeguarding creators and other producers of intellectual goods and services by granting them certain time- limited rights to control the use made of those productions. These rights do not apply to the physical object in which the creation may be embodied but instead to the intellectual creation as such. IP is traditionally divided into two branches: “industrial property and copyright”. The convention establishing the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), concluded in Stockholm on July 14, 1967 (Art. 2(viii) provides that

“intellectual property shall include rights relating to:

1) literary, artistic and scientific works:

2) performances of performing artists, phonograms and broadcasts;

3) inventions in all fields of human behaviour;

4) scientific discoveries;

5) industrial designs;

6) trademarks, service marks, and commercial names and designations;

7) protection against unfair competition and all other rights resulting from intellectual activity in industrial scientific, literary or artistic fields”.

The areas mentioned under (1) belong to the copyright branch of intellectual property. The areas mentioned in (2) are usually called “neighboring rights”, that is, rights neighboring on copyright. The areas mentioned under 3, 5 and 6 constitute the industrial property branch of IP. The areas mentioned may also be considered as belonging to that branch.

The expression industrial property covers inventions and industrial designs. Simply stated, inventions are new solutions to technical problems, and industrial designs are aesthetic creations determining the appearance of industrial products. In addition, industrial property includes trademarks, service marks, commercial names and designations, including indications of source and appellations of origin, and protection against unfair competition. Hence the aspect of intellectual creations -although existent -is less prominent, but what counts here is that the object of industrial property typically consists of signs transmitting information to consumers, in particular, as regards products and services offered on the market, and that the protection is directed against unauthorized use of such signs which is likely to mislead consumers and misleading practices in general.

Scientific discoveries are not the same as inventions. The general treaty on the international recording of scientific discoveries /1978/ defines a scientific discovery as ‘the recognition of phenomena, properties or laws of the material universe not hitherto recognized and capable of verification. “(Art. 1(1)(i)). Inventions are new solutions to specific technical problems. Such solutions must, naturally rely on the properties or laws of the materials universe /otherwise they could not be materially or ‘technically’ applied/, but those properties or laws need not be properties or laws’ not hitherto recognized’. An invention puts to new use, to new technical use, the said properties or laws, whether they are recognized (“discovered”) simultaneously with making the invention or whether they were already recognized (“discovered”) before and independently from the invention.

Industrial and cultural development may be favored by stimulating creative activity and facilitating the transfer of technology and the dissemination of literary and artistic works. In the Ethiopian legal system too the protection of intellectual property rights is afforded at constitutional level. The FDRE Constitution recognizes that every Ethiopian citizen has the right to ownership of private property with certain restrictions. Article 40(2) defines private property as any tangible or intangible product which has value and is produced by the labor, creativity, enterprise or capital of an individual citizen, associations which enjoy juridical personality under the law. Thus, the constitution declares protection for every property whether it is tangible or intangible. That means protection is afforded equally for intellectual property rights as any other property since they are intangible products.

It is difficult to determine what types of ownership we should allow for non corporeal, intellectual objects, such as writings, inventions and secret business information. There are intellectual properties which are not products of the mind. For instance, all trademarks are not products of the mind. Trademarks creation does not necessarily require intellectual activity. The same holds true for geographic indication. They don’t require the work of the mind like patent and copyright.

IP is a bundle of legal rights resulting from intellectual creativity in industrial, scientific, artistic and literary fields. This definition is from the point of view of rights. IP is legal protection accorded to works of the mind in distinction from manual work (result of physical labour). It is a legal protection accorded to incorporeal ownership.

Regarding protection of IP rights, there were historical, philosophical and epistemological problems. Historically, reservation exists as to the protection of such rights as they don’t exhibit essential characteristics of property, i.e. material existence. They consider corporeal chattels only as propriety. For them property should be subject to appropriation/occupancy/.

The other problem is related to problems of philosophy. They believed that human beings cannot be regarded as a creator of something. They say human beings cannot create something. Which is also reflected in religions? The problems also relate with epistemology. What we reflect is what we observe from the world (our experience, life experience). The then contemporary writers wrote that IP lacks essential characters to be considered property.

Through time the laws of various countries started to incorporate protection to intellectual creativity, though they are independent. There are two factors in lumping intellectual property rights together. These are: Conceptual Basis and Historical Basis

Historical

The convention establishing the WIPO was signed in Stockholm in 1967 and entered into force in 1970. However, the origin of WIPO goes back to 1883- the Paris Convention on industrial property and 1886- the Berne Convention on copyright. Both were placed under the supervision of the Swiss Federal Government. Initially there were two secretaries (one for industrial property, and other for copyright). However, in 1893 the two secretaries united. United International Bureaux for the Protection of IP (BIRPI) became WIPO.

Conceptual

IP rights objects (enterprises) are inherently inappropriable. They are intangible by nature. Use by others cannot be denied by using the possession of a property first created. Once you have written a book and published it then the public may make use of that property.

Scope of Intellectual Property Rights

Intellectual property rights include copyright, patent, trademark, geographic indication of origin, industrial design, trade secrets, database protection laws, publicity rights laws, laws for the protection of plant varieties, laws for the protection of semi-conductor chips (which store information for later retrieval), etc.

There is a conventional mode of classification of intellectual property as industrial property and copyrights. Industrial properties include inventions (patent), property interest on minor invention (Utility model certificate) and commercial interests (Trade Marks, trade names, geographical indications, and industrial design), plant breeder rights, biodiversity, etc.

Patents

A patent is a type of intellectual property right which allows the holder of the right to exclusively make use of and sale an invention when one develops an invention. Invention is a new process, machine, manufacture, composition of matter. It is not an obvious derivation of the prior art (It should involve an inventive step). A person who has got a patent right has an exclusive right. The exclusive right is a true monopoly but its grant involves an administrative process.

Copyright

It is an intellectual property which does not essentially grant an exclusive right over an idea but the expressions of ideas which makes if different from patent law. Patent is related with invention - technical solution to technical problems. Copyright is a field which has gone with artistic, literary creativity- creativity in scientific works, audio-visual works, musical works, software and others. There are neighboring rights. These are different from copyright but related with it – performers in a theatre, dancers, actors, broadcasters, producers of sound recorders, etc. It protects not ideas but expressions of ideas as opposed to patent.

Copyright protects original expression of ideas, the ways the works are done; the language used, etc. It applies for all copyrightable works. Copyright lasts for a longer period of time. The practice is life of author plus 50 years after his/her life. Administrative procedures are not required, unlike patent laws, in most laws but in America depositing the work was necessary and was certified thereon but now it is abolished.

Industrial Design Law

Some call this design right (European) and some call it patentable design, industrial design (WIPO and other international organization). A design is a kind of intellectual property which gives an exclusive right to a person who has created a novel appearance of a product. It deals with appearance: how they look like. Appearance is important because consumers are interested in the outer appearance of a product. It is exclusively concerned with appearance, not quality.

The principles which have been utilized in developing industrial design law are from experiences of patent and copyright laws. It shares copyright laws because the design is artistic. It shares patent law because there are scientific considerations. Design law subsists in a work upon registration and communication. It makes them close to patent law since they are also founded in patent law. Duration is most of the time 20 years like the patent law trademark Rights law.

Trademarks Rights Law

It is a regime of the law giving protection to graphic representation to words or logos or depending on the jurisdiction question such as sound or smells which are distinctive in nature and serve as source identification. There is also a recent phenomenon which is representing goods in their smell and sound. It is to be found on the goods associated with them. It enables the customer to identify the goods from others. They serve as a source identifier. Trademarks perform communication function. Once there is a valid representation, it gives the mark owner an exclusive right. It begins with registration and publication of the mark. But there are exceptions which serve what trademarks registered serve which are not registered. It means they deserve protection even though they are not registered. They exist forever so long as the good with which they are associated continue to be sold. But they require renewal.

Right of Publicity

It protects the right to use one’s own name or likeness for commercial purposes.

Geographic Indication

It is indications on products of the geographic origin of the goods. It indicates the general source. The indication relates to the quality or reputation or other characteristics of the good. For example, “made in Ethiopia” is not influenced by the geographical Indication. Geographical indications are sometimes called appellations of origin. For example, “Sheno lega”, “Shampagne” (name of a region in France) are geographical indications.

Trade Secrets

It gives the owner of commercial information that provides a competitive edge the right to keep others from using such information if the information was improperly disclosed to or acquired by a competitor and the owner of the information took reasonable precautions to keep it secret. It protects confidential secrets of some commercial value. The holder of the secret wants this information to be protected; some protect the holder from an unauthorized disclosure of the information. A tort law, unfair competition or contract law can protect such information which is secret /confidential information/. The holder (owner) has to do his/her best to keep the information secret. Trade secrets exist without registration as it is to make the information public, for example, the formula of Coca Cola.  Information that are protected in trade secrets can be patentable if they are novel and non obvious. But it is, most of the time, not to make the secret public. However, their full-fledged IP rights are contestable.

Nature of Intellectual Property

Intellectual properties have their own peculiar features. These features of intellectual properties may serve to identify intellectual properties from other types of properties. Thus, we will discuss them in brief.

1. Territorial

Any intellectual property issued should be resolved by national laws. Why is it an issue? Because intellectual property rights have one characteristic which other national rights do not have. In ownership of intellectual property of immovable properties, issues of cross borders are not probable. But in intellectual properties, it is common. A film made in Hollywood can be seen in other countries. The market is not only the local one but also international. If a design in China is imitated by another person in France which law would be applicable?

2. Giving an exclusive right to the owner

It means others, who are not owners, are prohibited from using the right. Most intellectual property rights cannot be implemented in practice as soon as the owner got exclusive rights. Most of them need to be tested by some public laws. The creator or author of an intellectual property enjoys rights inherent in his work to the exclusion of anybody else.

3. Assignable

Since they are rights, they can obviously be assigned (licensed). It is possible to put a dichotomy between intellectual property rights and the material object in which the work is embodied. Intellectual property can be bought, sold, or licensed or hired or attached.

4. Independence

Different intellectual property rights subsist in the same kind of object. Most intellectual property rights are likely to be embodied in objects.

5. Subject to Public Policy

They are vulnerable to the deep embodiment of public policy. Intellectual property attempts to preserve and find adequate reconciliation between two competing interests. On the one hand, the intellectual property rights holders require adequate remuneration and on the other hand, consumers try to consume works without much inconvenience. Is limitation unique for intellectual property?

6. Divisible (Fragmentation)

Several persons may have legally protected interests evolved from a single original work without affecting the interest of other right holders on that same item. Because of the nature of indivisibility, intellectual property is an inexhaustible resource. This nature of intellectual property derives from intellectual property’s territorial nature. For example, an inventor who registered his invention in Ethiopia can use the patent himself in Ethiopia and License it in Germany and assign it in France. Also, copyright is made up of different rights. Those rights may be divided into different persons: publishers, adaptors, translators, etc.

In a very important sense, for the lawyer, each international organization is unique, based as it is on its own constituent document and influenced as its development will be by peculiar political configurations. Thus, labels should never be substituted for analysis, as Brownlie has pointed out. An academic textbook on international organizations is not complete with-out an attempt to classify the various organizations into different types, sorts, forms or categories. Perhaps the main reason for making such classifications resides in the academic psyche: all academic disciplines engage in classification for purposes of organizing knowledge, if nothing else, so legal academics should do the same. We can classify international organization based on different criterions. Some of them are the following.

 

Classification based on functions

A first point often made by scholars is that organizations may be classified in accordance with their stated functions. Thus, quite few are active in the economic field; others are engaged in peace and security, or can be classified as military alliances. Yet others deal with issues of nutrition, public health, and telecommunication or fisheries conservation, to name just a few possibilities. A distinction based on functions automatically suggests itself, and it is broadly possible to distinguish between the “political” organizations, concerned primarily with the preservation of international peace and security, and the administrative organizations of more limited aims. The distinction is perhaps more accurately stated as one between organizations of comprehensive competence and organizations of limited competence. Prima facie, one should also distinguish the institutions for the judicial settlement of disputes, such as the permanent Court of international justice. As we shall see, no rigid distinction in functions is made in practice. The “political” organization, the United Nations, has amongst its organs the Trusteeship Council, with primarily administrative functions, and the I.CJ., a purely judicial body. The co-ordination achieved by bringing the specialized agencies into relationship with the UN also makes any clear classification by function difficult.

 

Classification based on Membership

Other classifications point to the membership of organizations as being of distinctive value. This method of classification base itself on the fact that some organizations are” global” whereas others are “regional”. Thus, some organizations aspire to universal or near universal membership, inviting in principle all states to join .The United Nations is a typical example, in principle open to all states as long as they meet certain requirements. Hence, the UN is often referred to as an ‘open’ organization, as are (although their membership does not compare to that of the UN) such organizations as the World Health Organization (WHO) and the World Trade Organization (WTO).

Other organizations however, may rest satisfied with a limited membership, and usually such limitations may derive from their overall purpose. Thus, many regional organizations, aiming to organize activities in a certain geographical region, are open only for states from that region. The European Union is only open for European sates; no Asian state can join the organization of African Unity, and the organization of American sates can only be joined by sates from the Americas. Within Europe at least (because of the diversity of the organizations involved), it has been possible to make the same broad division between organizations of general competence and those of limited competence.

The limitation is not always based on consecrations of geography, though. For instance, the organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) is a limited organization, but its membership spans the globe, including states from the Middle East, Latin America and Africa. Here, the ties are economic. Similarly the organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has also, in addition to a large number of west European member-states, members from the Americas, Asia and Oceania, and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) does justice to the Atlanticism in its name by including members from western and southern Europe as well as the US and Canada, wereas the French-speaking countries are united in an organization devoted to francophonie^.. Where membership is limited to states from a certain, region such organizations may be referred to as ‘regional’, but the more generic term used is often ‘closed’.

 

Classification based on the kind of contracting parties

It has also been suggested that there is a fundamental distinction, and therefore a basis for classification, between organizations founded on a treaty between states and a treaty between governments. Jenks has described this distinction as having importance comparable to that of the classical distinction between a confederation and a federation in the evolution of the public law of the principal federal states. The idea is, essentially, that the inter-state treaty form embraces the totality of the state’s institution, its legislative and judicial machinery as well as the administrative, whereas the inter-governmental treaty form embraces only the administrative. It would seem, however, that in practice the distinction is not regarded as having this significant difference in effect. The UN Charter itself refers indiscriminately to “peoples,” “governments” and “states,” so that it is difficult to see who the parties really are. Organizations like the IMF or the newer IMCO are based on inter-governmental treaties, whereas the FAO or WHO are inter-state; yet there is no observable difference in the view that States take as to their commitments according to the form used. The most that might be said is that, from the point of view of drafting technique, these variations leave much to be desired. The only possible justifications for the difference are first that the inter-governmental form would be satisfactory for a non-permanent organization, like UNRRA, and second that some States might find it easier, from their constitutional position, to accept the inter-governmental form. The distinction between inter-governmental and non-governmental organizations is, of course, a quite different matter.

 

Classification based on Intergovernmental or supranational

It is also possible to distinguish organization “Supranational,” i.e. power to bind member states by their decisions, from those without such powers. But this is often the characteristic of particular organ, rather than the organization as a whole, and whilst the possession of such powers will be pointed out where they exist. As things stand, there is only one organization which is usually held to be supranational in character: the EC. Hence, any description of supranational organizations will inevitably be based on the EC.

In comparison with other organizations, the EC possesses a few features which, in combination, render it distinct from the rest. First, under the constituent treaties, decisions which will bind the member –states can be taken by majority vote. Thus, it is entirely possible that a member – state will have to adopt a certain course of behavior which it itself vehemently opposes. Second, the product of those decisions is EC law which attains supremacy over conflicting domestic law, regardless of what the laws of the member-state stipulate and regardless of which one was enacted later. Third, much of the law promulgated by the EC may be directly effective in the legal orders of the member-states. Thus, much EC law may be invoked not just by one member-state against his or her own government, or in relations with employers or other relations of a private nature. It is in this sense that people often say that the member-states have transferred parts of their sovereignty to the EC, and it is in this sense that the EC. stands, in an almost literal way, above its member –States (hence the term’ supranational).

Some would go further and claim that on occasion, the member-sates are no longer allowed even to attempt to regulate behavior: the doctrine of pre-emption not only holds that member-state action can be overruled, but goes beyond this in saying that member-state action is no longer acceptable in some areas^.

By contrast, the general rule among international organizations is that binding law-making decisions, at least on issues of substantive policy, can usually only be taken by unanimity, or consensus; that such rule does not usually work directly in the domestic legal orders of the member–states, and most assuredly that the member-states are not pre-empted from legislating. Here then, the organization does not rise above its member but remains between its members (intergovernmental)^.

There are a number of different ways in which one can approach the phenomenon of international organization within the world order. The rationalist approach emphasizes the notion of a world order of states that is moving towards the more sophisticated types of order found within states. It is progressive in that it believes in the transformation of a society of states into a true world community based upon the application of universally valid moral and legal principles. In other words, the development of the United Nations into a real world authority is seen not only as beneficial but also as, in the long run, inevitable. This is to be accomplished by the gradual increase in the influence and responsibility of the organization in all fields of international peace and security. Thus international organizations have a profound substantive as well as procedural purpose, and are intended to function above and beyond mere administrative convenience. To put it another way, the rationalists emphasis the role of such institutions as active performers upon the world stage rather than as mechanisms to greater efficiency.

Another general line of approach is the revolutionary one, which regards international institutions in terms of specific policy aims. Here, the primary aim is not the evolution of a world community of states based upon global associations as perceived by the rationalists, but rather the utilization of such institutions as a means of attaining the final objective, whether it be the victory of the proletariat or the rearrangement of existing states into, for example, continental units.

The third approach which may be noted is exemplified by the doctrine of realism. This centers its attention on the struggle for power and supremacy and eschews any concern for idealistic views. The world stage is seen as a constant and almost chaotic interweaving of contentious state powers, and international institutions are examined within the context of the search for dominance. Both the league and the UN were created to reinforce the status quo established after the world wars, it is stressed, although the latter institution is now seen as reflecting the new balance of power achieved with the growth of influence of the states of the third world. Since what can be described as a world order is merely a reflection of the operation of the principle of the balance of power, realists see the role of world organizations as reinforcing that balance and enabling it to be safely and gradually altered in the light of changing patterns of power; although, to be accurate, their overall attitude to such organizations is usually characterized by cynicism, as the inherent weaknesses in these organization have become apparent.

A more hopeful way of looking at the international institutions is to concentrate upon those areas where the interdependence of states has impelled them to create viable organs for co-operation. By this means, by identifying such subjects for international agreement, it is hoped to be able to encourage growing circles of cooperation which may eventually impinge upon the basic political areas of world peace. This functional approach appears as a cross between the nationalist and realist trends and is one much examined in recent years.  This approach also emphasizes the pattern of institutional behavior and the operations of the relevant bureaucracies, including the way in which the tasks set for the organization are identified and completed. Decision-making analysis is another useful tool in this area

It is also possible to examine international organization in a variety of other ways, ranging form historical and comparative exposition to analysis of the legal rules underlying the establishment and operations of the particular institution.

Because of the great diversity of international and regional intergovernmental organizations, ranging from the United Nations to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the International Labour Organization, great difficulty has been experienced in classifying the relevant material. In this chapter, the simplest method of division into institutions of a universal character, regional institutions and the legal aspects of international institutions will be adopted. Within the relevant categories, the particular functions of different organizations, as well as their varying constitutional framework, will be briefly noted

 

The Chief functions of international organizations:

At present international organizations perform many functions and their functions are constantly increasing. Due to paucity of space it is not possible to mention here all the functions performed by international organizations. It will suffice to note here only those functions which are main in principle and which include other functions. Such functions are the following:-

I.One of the main functions of international organizations is keeping intact the sovereignty of states and despite their different social systems, they establish and expand peaceful cooperation among them.

II.The second main function is to ensure that the competition going on among the individual states remains peaceful.