The Maastricht Treaty aimed partly to close the democratic deficit that exists in the European decision-making process. Accordingly, the role and the powers of the European Parliament were increased: a right of initiative was created, 1 committees of inquiry were reinforced, 2 the right of petition3 was recognised, an Ombudsman was created4 and a new legislative procedure, 5 which attempted to put the Parliament on an equal footing with the Council, was also included in the Treaty.

This article considers the significance of the UK Takeover Code's non-frustration prohibition. It asks to what extent the prohibition actually prevents post-bid, director-controlled defences that would not have been, in any event, either formally prohibited by UK company law without share-holder approval or practically ineffective as a result of the basic UK company law rule set. It finds that there would be minimal scope for director-deployed defences in the absence of the non-frustration prohibition, and that, in the context of UK company law, such defences have limited scope to be deployed for entrenchment purposes. Furthermore, this minimal scope for board defensive action would, in order to be compliant with a director's duties, require a pre-bid, shareholder-approved alteration to the UK's default constitutional balance of power between the board and the shareholder body to allow corporate powers to be used for defensive effect. In light of this conclusion the article looks for a rationale to justify denying shareholders the right to make this limited and potentially beneficial defensive election. It concludes that no persuasive rationale is available and that the prohibition is unnecessary and without justification.

What do we know about the role of legal systems as determinants of the location of foreign direct investment (FDI)? The short answer to this question is: not enough.1 In recent decades, most governments have come to believe that FDI is an important source of the capital and technology necessary for economic development, and to seek new ways to induce foreign investors to locate within their jurisdiction.2 Commentators and development agencies regularly argue or imply that FDI flows are to some extent determined by the effectiveness of the host State's legal system.3 That is, it is suggested that the manner in which laws are implemented in a State can act as a deterrent or an attraction to potential foreign investors.4

The definition and scope of indigenous peoples' human rights are usually contentious in the context of Africa.2 While in recent years indigenous peoples' human rights have expanded immensely internationally, in Africa indigenous peoples' rights are still perceived to be in their infancy.3 At the United Nations, the group of African States delayed the process that finally led to the adoption of the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in 2007 (UNDRIP).4 At a national level, most of the States in Africa are still reluctant to recognize the specific rights of indigenous peoples.5 Until recently, the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights (the Commission), the leading human rights institution for the continent,6 had kept a low profile on the issue and had ‘not always interpreted indigenous peoples’ rights favourably'.7 From this perspective Commission regarding the communication submitted by the indigenous Endorois community against Kenya casts new light on the rights of indigenous peoples in Africa.8 The decision, which has already been hailed as a ‘landmark,’9 touches on several crucial issues regarding the development of indigenous peoples' human rights in Africa. This groundbreaking decision did not materialize unexpectedly but is part of a wider evolution of the Commission regarding indigenous peoples' human rights in Africa. It echoes the work of the Commission's own Working Group of Experts on Indigenous Populations/Communities (Working Group) which was established in 2001 with the mandate to focus specifically on the promotion and protection of the rights of indigenous peoples in Africa.10 The mandate of the Working Group is to examine the concept of indigenous communities in Africa, as well as to analyse their rights under the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights (African Charter).11 In 2003 the Commission adopted the report of the Working Group which proposes several avenues for the recognition and promotion of indigenous rights in Africa.12 The adoption of an Advisory Opinion by the Commission to support the adoption of UNDRIP marked another step toward the affirmation of indigenous peoples' rights in Africa.13 The Advisory Opinion not only participated in unlocking the reluctance of the group of African States to adopt the UNDRIP, but also reflected developments taking place at the international level on the rights of indigenous peoples as well as their connection to the continent. Remarkably, in recent years, the Commission has started to refer to indigenous peoples' rights in its examination of States' periodic reports.14 All these factors and the recent decision of the Commission in the Endorois case indicate the emergence of a consistent jurisprudence on indigenous peoples' rights in Africa.

[In 1999, the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee invited a number of international lawyers to submit papers on the legal aspects of the Kosovo crisis. Papers were submitted by Professor Ian Brownlie QC, Professor Christine Chinkin, Professor Christopher Greenwood QC, Professor Vaughan Lowe, and Mark Littman QC. The three last-named answered questions on the issue at a session of the Committee held in February 2000.

In this article the legal and institutional issues surrounding the transition to a European Central Bank (ECB) will be discussed. The transition to a single currency entails many legal and institutional issues, both at the European level and at member State level. I will focus on a few main themes.

This article discusses the current negotiations for an Implementing Agreement under the United Nations Convention on the Law of Sea on the conservation and sustainable use of marine biodiversity in areas beyond national jurisdiction. It discusses, in particular, the issue of the relationship of the new agreement with existing and future relevant regional instruments and bodies and the need for cooperation and coordination amongst them, the guiding principles of the new agreement, and the question of implementation and enforcement of the new agreement. These issues and the choices that delegations will make respectively highlight the controversy on the underpinning tenet of the agreement, ie between the ‘freedom of the high seas’ and the common heritage of mankind. The article concludes with a pessimistic prognosis that, in general, the agreement will fall short of the expectations that many States and international community have had at the early days of the negotiation.

When the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR) released a letter in early 2012 addressing the financial and economic crises, it was long overdue. Finally, and around four and a half years after the crises began, the body responsible for monitoring those rights that had been most severely impacted had spoken. But what had been said? This article examines the alterations to the doctrine of non-retrogression that the 2012 Letter instigated. It does so by reference to the ‘Business as Usual’ and ‘accommodation’ theories of emergency response. The Letter to States is argued to have taken the Committee away from an approach to non-retrogression that treated times of normality and emergency in a similar way, and towards an approach that allows derogation-style deviations from the Covenant. This, it is argued, could have detrimental effects for the protection of economic and social rights. The difficulties in applying such an approach are considered.

On 27 June 2000, the updated Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises (the Guidelines) were adopted by the 29 Member States of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) together with the observer governments of Argentina, Brazil, Chile and the Slovak Republic. The Ministerial Conference Chairman, Mr Peter Costello, described the 2000 Review as heralding the most “far reaching changes” to the Guidelines since their introduction in 1976.1 This note proposes to consider only the most noteworthy among them.2 Accordingly, it will not examine those elements that have merely been reaffirmed by the 2000 Review. However, the conclusions will be made that the Chairman's sentiments are only observable in the ongoing textual development of the Guidelines and that the all-important implementation mechanism has only been improved by half-measure

‘Sometimes the most important historical events are the non-events: the things that did not occur,’ says the British historian Niall Ferguson.1 Such a statement may well describe in large measure the International Court of Justice's case-law regarding the methods for the identification of rules of customary international law during the period 2000–2009. The previous two decades had been marked by two milestones in this domain: the eighties by the judgment on the merits in Nicaragua,2 and the nineties by the Court's advisory opinion in Nuclear Weapons.3 There was, though, no single decision by the Court of comparative significance regarding methods of customary international law during the first decade of the new millennium. Further, some of the most important determinations in this domain were those in which the Court did not declare the existence of a customary international rule. However, this is not to say that the above-mentioned conclusion applies to all of the Court's jurisprudence related to customary international law. The conclusion is limited to the Court's decisions regarding the methods for the recognition of norms of this character. In fact, the Court made very important pronouncements as to the content of customary international law in many domains, such as the use of force, territorial occupation, diplomatic protection, and international humanitarian law.

Security (in a broad sense, see infra, II.B) in Europe is the realm of several regional international organisations, mainly the European Union (“EU”), Western European Union (“WEU”), North Atlantic Treaty Organization (“NATO”), the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (“OSCE”) and, to a lesser extent, the Council of Europe, creating a patchwork of regional security institutions that is unique in the world. These organisations interact in many ways and claim to be mutually reinforcing. Is that the case? Is there room for improvement?

A plea of superior orders in response to charges founded upon violations of the international laws of armed conflict has since 1945 been treated as a plea in mitigation of sentence rather than as a defence, a position founded upon article 8 of the 1945 Charter of the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg. In 1998 the draft Statute of the proposed permanent International Criminal Court appeared, by article 33, to “restore” superior orders as a defence, a move deprecated by some as an apparent softening of the international legal approach to war crimes in an age in which such violations are all too prominently before the world's scrutiny. In fact both the formerly received “Nuremberg” doctrine and the appearance of a radical change, or reversion, in the 1998 Statute can be argued to be erroneous. It is the contention of this paper that far from advancing a new and stricter doctrine, the Charter of the IMT at Nuremberg correctly applied pre-existing doctrine in extreme and unusual circumstances but was mistakenly taken to have developed a new approach which was then applied with potentially distorting effect for the generality of circumstances. In this view the 1998 Statute has merely recognised the essential doctrine of superior orders as it existed prior to 1945 and which, properly understood, should not have been thought essentially to have been changed even in 1945.

Internet communication has long been known to pose a challenge to private international law and its reliance on geographical connecting factors. This article looks at the problem from the perspective of EU private international law and argues that the way in which it has been accommodated by Regulations Brussels I, Rome I, and II conflicts with some of its central paradigms. It advances an alternative approach that would generally submit claims against information society service providers established in the EU to the jurisdiction and substantive laws of their ‘country of origin’ but make certain exceptions for private persons and consumers. The article argues that implementing such an approach would require little legislative change, be more faithful to the particularities of internet communication, and give greater effect to the central paradigms of EU private international law.