This article explores how sovereignty fictions have been used to advance different legal, political and economic aims in the articulation of the United Kingdom's future approach to global regulation. By mapping the transformative shifts in sovereignty paradigms, this article highlights the disconnect between the absolutist sovereignty popularised in the UK government's political rhetoric and the concept of regulatory sovereignty that underpins the UK's future trading strategy. To maintain its status as a global leader in regulation and standards-setting, the UK government will need to diffuse power and delegate autonomy through networked orders of public and private actors. These competing sovereignty paradigms are analysed with reference to European Union (EU) law and practice, to highlight the opportunities and challenges for the UK as an independent trade actor. This article concludes by evaluating how sovereignty fictions can disrupt the objectives of the UK's proposed ‘common law’ approach to regulatory governance and discusses the policy interventions that may be required to enable the UK to harness its potential as a regulatory leader.

Since 1 August 19861 the United Kingdom has been party to two international conventions on child abduction: the Hague Convention of 25 October 1980 on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction, and the European (Luxembourg) Convention of 20 May 1980 on the Recognition and Enforcement of Decisions Concerning Custody of Children and on Restoration of Custody of Children. While differing in various respects, each Convention seeks to tackle the problem of international child abduction by expediting the return of children under the age of 16 to their country of habitual residence following a wrongful removal to or retention in another contracting State. The principal difference between the Conventions is that while the Hague Convention deals with breaches of “rights of custody” or rights of access which may arise whether or not any court order exists with regard to the child, the European Convention is concerned solely with the recognition and enforcement of orders and decisions relating to custody and access.

‘Nothing ventured, everything gained!’ is an apt summary of the position recently adopted by the French Cour de Cassation towards the subject of mitigation of loss. In two seminal judgments of 19 June 2003,1 the French supreme court2 explicitly rejected the introduction of a general principle of mitigation in the French law of tort, thereby departing from the solutions reached in England and other neighbouring legal systems.

Last year saw the 200th anniversary of one of the most influential national codes,1 the French Code civil of 1804. The celebration of this Napoleonic achievement has led in turn to renewed discussions on the understanding, purpose and contemporary form of codification.2 At the same time 2004 saw Belgium adopt its very first Code of private international law.3 Codification is so closely associated with continental Europe4 that it may be startling to read that civilian legal systems are not entirely codified. In fact despite the arguable closeness of domestic substantive rules and conflict of law rules, this area of law largely escaped the codification process of the 19th century. What is more remarkable is the fact that the new Code de droit international privé appears to be a codification in the classical form. It represents not simply a compendium of existing statutes but a detailed reform of the entire area.5 It is certainly true that in contemporary Europe the elaboration of classical codes, once viewed as the expression of affirmed political power,6 has become a rather exceptional occurrence. This is not to say that codification is no longer a fundamental constant of the civilian tradition. Civil law systems are still essentially founded on the precedence of enacted and in principle codified7 general rules on the basis of which solutions are to be deduced. However, codification is polymorphic,8 and codes, which ideally display a number of attributes— coherence, logical structure, absence of contradiction, conformity of codified and applied law, completeness, clarity, ease of use and publicity9—may seek to achieve the general purpose of the formal simplification or systematization of the law in different ways. Indeed in Europe the aspiration of creating ‘perfect laws’10 that prevailed throughout the golden age of classical codification in the 19th century, has largely given way to less demanding forms of codification.11 Recent years have concurrently seen movements of decodification12 as well as recodification,13 and witnessed the creation of generally less ambitious codification-compilations14 which gather and order existing rules in specific areas without engaging in reform.15 This final development ought not to be regarded as surprising as the combination of reform and codification is far from simple:

experience shows that it is very difficult truly to do both at the same time […] The reform shall precede the codification process so that the latter may integrate the former, or the codification shall precede the reform in order to facilitate its realisation: it is more opportune and more intelligible to reform in view of the legal state clearly revealed by codification.16

Burundi, a small State in Eastern Africa, has been suffering a repetitive cycle of interethnic violence since its independence in 1962. Tensions were ongoing, but never reached the scale of the Rwandese massacres of 1994. The Burundian conflict thus received less international attention. Hardly any academic writing exists on human rights violations in Burundi.1 International efforts to counter impunity remained half-hearted.

Since the last note on this subject,1 developments have focused on continuing problems: financing new infrastructure; allocation of the true costs of transport among those who generate them; and external relations. In addition, further more detailed legislative measures have been adopted for each mode of transport.

This area of law is dominated by the drive towards harmonisation, and a considerable body of legislation and case law continues to be generated. The vision is of investment in creativity and innovation, leading to growth and competitiveness of a wide range of European industries. Significant progress—sometimes unexpected—can be recorded in certain areas, but it should also be acknowledged that the scale of the problems precludes easy solutions in others.

There are numerous publications on the interpretation of Article 30 of the EC Treaty by the European Court of Justice1 which for the last 20 years has been one of the most controversial issues in EC law. It is, however, surprising that there is much older, yet strikingly similar, case law of the US Supreme Court which has remained almost unnoticed in Europe. In this article the respective case law of the two courts will be compared. Such a comparison is not only of interest as such, but can also contribute to the discussion about the correct scope of Article 30—which has certainly not yet been exhausted.

Consideration of the Conseil d'Etat and its role in the preparation of legislation helps us in Britain to appreciate how our own legislative process might be improved. The Hansard Society Report1 suggested in 1992 that Britain needed to look beyond just improving the drafting of legislation and needed to reform the legislative process, both before a bill is presented to Parliament and in its passage through Parliament. My reflection on the French process is to suggest that this offers us a further focus of attention—the questions which should be asked during the scrutiny process. There are two areas where we need to ask questions—on fundamental rights and practical effectiveness. I think that the British trust too much to the political process to ensure that questions concerning respect for fundamental values and also administrative workability are addressed before a bill is passed by Parliament. This paper is influenced by observations made in 1986 of the Interior Section of the Conseil d'Etat in its scrutiny of a number of government bills at the beginning of the Chirac premiership.

In the post-World War II international economy, with its enormous growth in transnational trade and investment, multinational legal practice has become a functional reality.1 Within the last two decades, the volume of trans-border legal practice has grown enormously in fields such as trade law, international banking and finance, international arbitration and litigation, international contractual and joint venture arrangements, transborder acquisitions and mergers, international antitrust, international tax planning, and foreign investment counselling. Domestic law firms within the leading commercial nations have not only grown substantially in size, often by merger, they have also increasingly created networks of foreign branch offices, or entered into international association or joint venture relationships with firms in other countries.2

Once again cases concerned with the threshold questions of private international law, such as characterisation and jurisdiction, have dominated the scene.