The fans' representatives also had some thoughts on the televising of games and pay-per-view television. They proclaimed “the right of fans to watch football matches on television without having to pay extra, since they take place in public arenas which have been paid for by the citizens”.1

A lecturer on the Alabama claims and the Geneva Tribunal of 1871–2, like a director of Hamlet, has to accept one inescapable fact: that everyone knows, broadly at least, how the story ends. There can be no reliance on suspense to sustain interest in the narrative. So I shall begin at the end.

The General Assembly first proposed that the International Law Commission look into the issue of state immunity in 1977. As State immunity, by its very nature, sits at the interface between traditional and contemporary notions of international law, the span of the negotiations over three decades inevitably exposed the resulting Convention to gaps and inconsistencies with evolving areas of international law. In 1999 the International Law Commission established a Working Group on Jurisdictional immunities of States and their property,

In March 2001 the Assembly of Heads of State and Government of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), meeting in extraordinary session in Sirte, Libya declared the establishment of a new pan-African body, the African Union (Union).1 The Constitutive Act (Act) of the Union entered into force on 26 May 20012 and in due course this new institution will replace the OAU.3 The Union, the brainchild of Libyan President Qaddafi, and modeled on the European Union, is the culmination of the OAU's piecemeal process of political cooperation and economic integration. It is designed to provide Africa with the legal and institutional framework to confront the twin challenges of the post-Cold War age and globalisation.

Analyses related to the Covid-19 pandemic have mainly addressed measures adopted in response to this event without paying attention to provisions included in the 2005 International Health Regulations which require States to develop predefined core capacities to prevent, control and provide a public health response to the international spread of disease. The legal architecture related to these obligations has, however, various shortcomings and States have largely failed to implement the required measures. Only recently has some practice been developed by the WHO to address these deficiencies, and further action is still required to finally implement this (neglected) cornerstone of the global health system.

This article considers whether there is any lawful authority for foreign armed forces assisting a territorial State during a non-international armed conflict to arrest and detain civilians. Taking the backdrop of Iraq and Afghanistan it considers relevant UN Security Council resolutions including Resolution 1546 (2004) relating to Iraq which authorized the multi-national force (MNF) ‘to take all necessary measures’ and provided for the internment, for imperative reasons of security, of civilians. In respect of Afghanistan, a number of resolutions authorized the International Assistance Stabilisation Force (ISAF) to ‘take all necessary measures’. It challenges the notion that the positive rights under international humanitarian law applicable to an international armed conflict apply, mutatis mutandis, to a non-international armed conflict, where national law (including human rights law having extra-territorial effect) is of primary (although not of exclusive) significance. It also considers which body of national law, that of the sending or that of the receiving State, applies to determine the lawfulness of detention of foreign civilians. The article recognizes that the arrest and detention of civilians may be necessary during a non-international armed conflict but concludes that the lawful justification for doing so needs to be clearly established.

The article analyses the recent reform of contract law in France. The section of the Civil Code on the law of contract was amended and restructured in its entirety last year. The revised section came into force on 1 October 2016. The article considers its main innovations and compares them with the corresponding principles of English law and some contract law international instruments, mainly the UNIDROIT Principles and the Principles of European Contract Law. The article also assesses whether the new provisions achieve their stated aim of rendering French contract law more accessible, predictable, influential abroad and commercially attractive.

The permanence of the genocide definition1 over more than five decades is remarkable considering how much criticism has been directed against it since the adoption of the Genocide Convention in 1948.2 The existence of a stable internationally agreed definition of genocide presents indubitable advantages, particularly if compared with the lasting uncertainties in the definition of other international crimes, such as crimes against humanity. However, the genocide definition is also characterised by a number of problematic aspects and unresolved interpretative questions, some of which have been addressed in the decisions of the ad hoc Tribunals for the Former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda.3 Divergent approaches to the mens rea requirement, to the definition of the four protected groups against whom genocide can be committed, or to the identification of acts that constitute genocide had been confined to an exclusively academic ambit until not long ago, but can now be determinative of an acquittal or conviction. With the exception of one decision by the ICTY,4 all other judgments on genocide have come from the ICTR, in whose custody are some of the most prominent members of the interim government and of the militias accused of having organised and carried out the 1994 Rwandan genocide.5

On 23 February 2012, the European Court of Human Rights (the Court), sitting as a Grand Chamber, delivered its long-anticipated judgment in the Hirsi Jamaa and Others v Italy (Hirsi) case.1 The case was filed on 26 May 2009 by 11 Somalis and 13 Eritreans who were among the first group of 231 migrants and refugees (191 men and 40 women) that left Libya heading for the Italian coast. Halted on 6 May 2009 by three ships from the Italian Revenue Police (Guardia di Finanza) approximately 35 miles south of Lampedusa on the high seas, in the SAR zone under Maltese competence, they were summarily returned to Libya without identification and assessment of their protection claims.2

This article considers the problem of ‘libel tourism’ (forum shopping in transnational libel cases) from the point of view of English and EU law (both relevant in certain situations). If proceedings are brought in a forum having no real connection with the case, and if the lex fori is applied, free speech in other countries could be undermined. This is particularly a problem where the case is brought in England, because of the pro-claimant slant of English libel law. The article notes when English conflicts law is applicable and when EU conflicts law is applicable, and explains the English and EU law regarding choice of law, jurisdiction and forum non conveniens in order to assess whether there is a genuine problem. It concludes that there is, particularly with regard to the Internet. Possible solutions are suggested.

It is now a decade since the United Kingdom, along with Germany and Belgium, followed the policy of traditional countries of immigration, such as the United States, Canada and Australia, and introduced legislation which provides for the imposition of fines on carriers for bringing in passengers with incorrect papers.1 The Immigration (Carriers' Liability) Act 1987 (“the Act”)2 imposed fines on carriers of £1,000 for each illegal entrant brought to the United Kingdom. This fine was doubled in August 1991 and two years later extended to cover passengers without transit visas where these were required.3