Uppsatsmall doc

1.1 The Purpose of the Thesis, its ”Key
Questions” and Delimitations
The aim of this thesis is to attempt to clarify the legal situation regarding
reservations and the occasional following objections thereto. To do this, the
applicable rules, found in the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties,
particularly articles 2 and 19-23 VCLT, have been examined. The work was
initiated on my behalf after being inspired to find out more about the legal effects
of the reservations and objections made to some of the reservations. The second
reason for, or purpose of this thesis is to attempt to answer the question if there is
a point for states to keep objecting to reservations made by other state parties to
a certain treaty.
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To present the applicable rules in the Vienna Convention on the Law of
Treaties relating to reservations and objection, and
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To give some thoughts on the answer to the subsequent question “is there
any point for states to keep objecting to reservations deemed
impermissible”.

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In order to be able to answer these questions, the first part, giving an overview of
the reservations regime, is absolutely necessary. The articles which have received
most attention are articles 19 VCLT, especially 19(c) VCLT, which is the “object
and purpose rule”, 20(4) VCLT, that deals with the reaction by other state parties
to the treaty on the reservations, and article 21 VCLT about the legal effect of
both reservations and objections.
There are many questions related to the questions I intend to address, but due to
the scope of this thesis, I have to limit the questions to the named above.
Therefore, there will not be any exploring of the difference between reservations
and interpretative declarations, to name an example of an issue omitted. I have
also decided to leave it up to someone else to make a comprehensive overview of
relevant case law. There will be a part on conventions, to which extensive or
sweeping reservations have been made, but these examples are far from the only
conventions facing the dilemma of general or far-reaching reservations. It would
be impossible to give a complete picture of this, so that has not been my aim.