ACCESSION to the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) has long been on the EU's political agenda. The EU's membership of the ECHR is not only seen as symbolically significant, but is also aimed at filling an important gap in the enforceability of human rights across Europe. At present, the EU cannot be brought before the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) and, while all EU Member States are parties to the ECHR, as long as the EU protects fundamental rights to a standard equivalent to that required under the ECHR, Member States cannot be held responsible for alleged violations of the Convention resulting from EU law either (Bosphorus v Ireland (2006) 42 E.H.R.R. 1).

It is axiomatic that divorcing spouses cannot by agreement oust the jurisdiction of the court to award ancillary relief: Hyman v. Hyman [1929] A.C. 601. Finality can only be achieved by obtaining the sanction of the court in the form of a consent order, invoking a procedure which requires full disclosure of all material factors so that the court can exercise its own discretion on the basis of the information put before it: Matrimonial Causes Act 1973, s.33A; Livesey v. Jenkins [1985] A.C. 424. But out-of-court agreements made by the parties are not without significance. Far from it, they will be treated as a very important consideration should the court subsequently be asked by one of the parties to make an award of ancillary relief, and will not usually be departed from unless there are good and substantial grounds for concluding that injustice will be done by holding the parties to their terms: Edgar v. Edgar [1980] 1 W.L.R. 1410. Presumptive enforceability has been criticised as “the worst of both worlds”, as the parties must go to court to determine whether the agreement they have reached is legally binding: Pounds v. Pounds [1994] 1 F.L.R. 775, 791, per Hoffmann L.J. Either the agreement should bind, or it should be wholly disregarded.

FOLLOWING a referendum on 23 June 2016 in which 52% of voters (38% of the total electorate) had expressed a preference for the UK to leave the EU, the Government announced that it would start the process of withdrawal, in accordance with Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union (“TEU”), by notifying the European Council of the UK's decision, exercising the Government's prerogative power to conduct foreign relations. A number of legal challenges were fast-tracked to the Supreme Court. In R. (Miller) v Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union (Birnie and others intervening) [2017] UKSC 5; [2017] 2 W.L.R. 583 after an expedited hearing, the Court decided two issues: (1) whether the Government could exercise its power under the royal prerogative to give notice, or needed an Act of Parliament to authorise the giving of notice; and (2) whether the Government required the consent of devolved legislatures in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales before giving notice or introducing to Parliament a Bill authorising the giving of notice. The Court sat unprecedentedly with all 11 serving members. On issue (1), the Court, by an 8–3 majority, held that an Act of Parliament would be required in order to authorise the giving of notice. On issue (2), the Court unanimously held that there was no legal requirement for consent by the devolved institutions.

I want first to explore what is happening to crime in an international context. If we look only at our own country the perspective is too narrow, the explanations and remedies too parochial. We cannot hope to comprehend ourselves without taking account of others.

This article argues that it is important for the International Court of Justice to be given an opportunity, for instance through a request for an Advisory Opinion, to explain what exactly it meant when it suggested that the ordinarily applicable international law on immunities need not be an obstacle “before certain international criminal courts, where they have jurisdiction”. Two international criminal courts have built a structure of case law on this one obiter comment, which it seems unable to support.

When should a contractual right be assignable to a non-party? English law's answer to this question is complex, and many of its rules are difficult to justify. In some respects, the law appears unreasonably pro-assignment, whereas sometimes it denies assignability to rights that should be assignable. This article contends that, in developing the law of assignability, the judiciary and Parliament have relied on a series of dubious ideas that deviate from the law's usual approach to contracts, and the current law rests partly on intuitive policy rationales that do not withstand scrutiny. The main aim of the article is to propose a new framework for thinking about the law of assignability that is more closely aligned with general ideas about contract law.

I may, I hope not inappropriately, begin by recalling a story told by our Chairman's distinguished predecessor, Sir William Anson, about Mr. Gladstone. While he was out of office, in 1890 Mr. Gladstone accepted an invitation to visit All Souls. The invitation included a request that he would give some kind of an address to the members of the Union Society, which had been the scene of his triumphs as an undergraduate sixty years ago. He agreed to do so and in a discussion with his host, the Warden of All Souls, as to a choice of subject Mr. Gladstone said that the subject did not very much matter provided it was one of general interest. He was thereupon persuaded to choose his own topic, and in due course he gave an eloquent address to a large undergraduate audience on ‘The Connexion of Homer with recent Assyriological Discovery’.

Until recently, it was widely accepted that a recipient of company distributions such as dividends paid in breach of the requirements of the Companies Act 1985 (“the Act”) could only be made to repay such distributions if he knew of the illegality. Whether one looked to the Act (to wit, section 277) or beyond (to the “knowing receipt”-type liability encountered in Precision Dippings Ltd. v. Precision Dippings Marketing Ltd.), liability required knowledge. In Bairstow v. Queen’s Moat House plc, however, there appears to be the faintest of suggestions that this position may be open for re-examination. This is reinforced by Lord Nicholls’ recent speech in Criterion Properties Plc v. Stratford UK Properties LLC.

Freedom of establishment has been a promise not only to individuals, but also to companies, ever since the foundation of the EEC, and the relevant articles in the EEC Treaty have long been declared to have direct effect (Reyners v. Belgium [1974] E.C.R. 631). Yet until recently companies faced extra hurdles. A majority of the Member States applied the so-called “theory of the real seat” (for references see H. Xanthaki, “Centros: is this really the end for the theory of the siège réel?” (2001) 22 Company Lawyer 2). In essence, the theory is a rule of private international law that a company will be treated according to the law of its central place of management (the “real seat”), notwithstanding that it may have been incorporated in a different jurisdiction. In such a case, the company will not fulfil the formal requirements of registration in the jurisdiction of its real seat and will normally lack the quality of a legal person there. The aim of the theory is to preserve national company law as a policy instrument in areas such as corporate governance, by disallowing pseudo-foreign companies, i.e. companies set up to do business mainly or exclusively in one jurisdiction, but evading local regulation there by incorporating abroad. But the theory can strike beyond this goal, as the facts of Case C-208/00 Überseering BV v. Nordic Construction Company Baumanagement GmbH demonstrate.

This article examines how courts determine whether proximity exists as between parties to a dispute in the “borderland” between two categories of negligence, viz. that concerning acts which cause physical harm and that concerning misstatements which cause pure economic losses. It is argued that these case categories cannot be delineated as neatly as the courts have assumed and that the kind of proximity typical of each is likely to be founded upon, at minimum, the presence of a close causal connection between ‘action’ and damage. In light of these findings, the article also considers the place of the notion of ‘directness’ in the tort of negligence.