The Belfast Agreement: A Practical Legal Analysis

The achievement of the Belfast Agreement, reached at Stormont on Good Friday 1998, is historic. However, it is widely misunderstood. It is an international agreement between the UK and Irish states, which entered in to force on 2 December 1999. It is premised upon, and promises, a transition from terrorism to democracy. The Belfast Agreement provides essentially for Northern Ireland devolution (with additional north-south and east-west institutions) within the 1920-22 partition settlement. The book is divided into five introduction (dealing with the two states parties); constitution; institutions, rights etc; and the load-bearing British-Irish Agreement.