With the increased mobility and interdependence brought on by globalisation governments can no
longer deal effectively with what were traditionally regarded as «domestic issues» unless they
cooperate among themselves. International law may once have been a sort of inter-state law
concerned mostly with relations between states but it now looks increasingly inside state
borders and has become to a large degree a trans-governmental law. While this creates
significant challenges even for highly-unified «nation-states» the challenges are even greater
for federations in which powers have been divided up between the central government and
federated states. What roles should central governments and federated states play in creating
and implementing this new form of governance? Using the Canadian federation as its starting
point this case study illustrates a range of factors to be considered in the appropriate
distribution of treaty powers within a federation. Professor Cyr also shows how - because it
has no specific provisions dealing with the distribution of treaty powers - the Canadian
constitution has «organically» developed a tight-knit set of rules and principles responding to
these distributional factors. This book is therefore both about the role of federated states in
the current world order and an illustration of how organic constitutionalism works.
