Despite appearances to the contrary, the International Court of Justice can and does have much to say on matters of criminal justice. This article considers four areas in which such matters arise before the Court: jurisdiction over criminal offences allegedly committed abroad and immunity from that jurisdiction; principles of individual criminal liability and the potential for concurrent State responsibility; issues of evidence and proof; and the Court's review of the exercise of those domestic criminal powers which are subject to international regulation. In the process of addressing these issues, the ICJ has contributed to the development of fundamental principles of criminal law, while drawing on the experience of domestic courts.

This article deals with the avoidance of contracts for non-performance under the United Nations Convention on the International Sale of Goods 1980, which has been adopted by more than 70 States, though not yet by the United Kingdom. It critically analyzes the text of the Convention, and measures the contributions of national courts for fidelity to the text of the Convention and compatibility with the purposes served by that text.

On the 31 October 2000 UNSC Resolution 1325 was adopted. The resolution provided for a range of measures aimed at the inclusion of women in the prevention, management and resolution of conflict. In particular, several of the resolution's provisions addressed the role of women and gender in peace negotiations and agreements. This article examines whether and how Resolution 1325 has impacted on the drafting of peace agreements. We analyse explicit references to women and gender in peace agreements from 1990 to 2010, providing a quantitative and qualitative assessment of the extent to which women and gender are addressed. We conclude by using our findings and analysis to address the relationship of feminist intervention to international law, and debates around the strategies and trade-offs which underlie feminist promotion and use of UN Security Council Resolutions in particular.

This article examines the application of the principle of justiciability principally where it has been invoked in the context of claims in the UK courts related to foreign affairs or public international law. It is submitted that the modern judicial trend is to find that issues are justiciable and focus instead on the degree and intensity of the review exercised. The trend is directed and supported by the growing importance of human rights and the rule of law.

Council Regulation 1347/2000 (the ‘Brussels II Regulation’) marked the beginning of the ‘Europeanization’ of family law. This article analyses the development of EU family law policy over the last decade, with particular focus on the common law perspective. It is argued that the Brussels II Regulation and the ensuing EU family law measures have had (and will have) a significant negative impact in English and Irish law, clashing with internal legal policy and sitting uneasily alongside existing legal structures.

In most of Europe, expropriation must comply with the standards set under European human rights law. Article 1 of the First Protocol (‘P1-1’) to the European Convention on Human Rights declares that ‘every natural or legal person is entitled to the peaceful enjoyment of his possessions.’ The European Court of Human Rights has stated that the right would be ‘largely illusory and ineffective’ if it did not guarantee full compensation in all but exceptional circumstances.1 It is quite clear, however, that this was not the belief of at least some of the States that had signed it when it came into force in 1954. P1-1 makes no reference to compensation. An interference must be lawful, and in the public or general interest, but there is nothing that expressly requires compensation. Nevertheless, the Court has declared that any interference with the right to the peaceful enjoyment of possessions must strike a ‘‘fair balance’ between the demands of the general interest of the community and the requirements of the protection of the individual's fundamental rights’,2 and this means that expropriation without compensation that is reasonably related to the value of the property would normally violate the owner's rights under P1-1.3

The WTO Appellate Body has so far authorized public appeal hearings as the exception, not the rule: it is limited to those instances in which the main parties request it. Such authorization constitutes a very positive development for the WTO dispute settlement system, for it enhances the transparency of the system at its highest stage. Indeed, the Appellate Body is becoming a leading actor in the formation of international law1 owing to the fact that it is the most active international court of the world, the relevance of the issues it deals with and the fact that it is at the apex of a dispute settlement system with permanent and exclusive jurisdiction over 153 States. Nonetheless, it is not in tune with inter-state international adjudication where the trend concerning hearings is, for good reason, geared towards openness and transparency, not privacy, as the rule.

Taxonomy, as a methodological tool introduced from natural science, brought the categorization of legal systems to comparative law.1 The term ‘legal family’2 is normally used as a metaphor, because it recognizes that within each grouping there are many variations. Each of the legal families is regarded as a combination of fundamental features of legal systems which have certain similarities. As an analytical device, taxonomy renders the comparison of different laws and legal institutions manageable by means of simplifying or abstracting the diverse and complicated realities of a myriad of legal systems. As a result, the concept of legal families acts as a support for legal borrowing and transplantation, as well as comprising an inevitable part of most comparative law works. Even where as few as two jurisdictions are involved, the categorization of legal families is still a useful tool for most comparative legal analysis. Assisted by the notion of legal families, comparativists can readily understand and explore an unfamiliar legal system.3 Normally, such scholars tend to accept the conventional or widely accepted categorization of a particular legal system as belonging to a certain legal family. However, without detailed scrutiny of the first-hand material, distortions may arise as a result of preconceptions held at the beginning of the comparative study.4

The period since the last survey published in this journal has been marked by much activity, but also some frustration, in the area of EU environmental policy.1 The present survey comes as the EU nears the end of its Sixth Environmental Action Programme (EAP) setting out the EU's environmental policy directions from 2002 to 2012, where it identified four priority areas for this period: climate change; nature and biodiversity; environment and health; and natural resources and waste.2 While progress has been made in each of these fields, significant setbacks have also occurred and, in a number of important areas, the state of the EU environment continues to deteriorate.

After almost two years of uncertainty, the EU is now progressing towards the adoption of harmonized rules on the law applicable to divorce through the activation, for the very first time, of the enhanced cooperation mechanism.

In a 6–3 opinion the United States Supreme Court held, in its first case involving the 1980 Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction2, that a ne exeat3 order confers a right of custody for a left behind parent, entitling that parent to maintain an action under the Convention. The decision reverses a 5th Circuit opinion4 which followed the rationale of CrollvCroll.5Croll held that a parent with visitation rights, coupled with a ne exeat clause, possessed only part of the ‘bundle of rights’6 which comprise ‘rights of custody’, and that such limited rights were insufficient to compel a return remedy under the 1980 Convention. The Supreme Court's decision settles a conflict among the federal circuits on this issue.7 Following the Croll rationale were Fawcett v. McRoberts,8 and Gonzales v Gutierrez.9 The 11th Circuit, however, in Furnes v. Reeves,10 held that a ne exeat provision in a Norwegian custody agreement conferred a right which would satisfy the Convention's definition of ‘custody rights’.