International sports law is more than a static set of rules and principles: it is better described as a process for avoiding and resolving disputes. Recent cases highlight its significance. The Swiss Equestrian case,1 decided by the Swiss Federal Tribunal, demonstrates the efficacy of using this process in cases involving issues of eligibility for competition. By contrast, the Reynolds case,2 decided by US federal courts, shows the folly of ignoring non-judicial remedies prescribed by international sports law. As a result, Reynolds became a sort of Dickensian struggle involving three years of litigation and some nine decisions before the case was finally dismissed. The courts could have, and should have, reached the same result by simply enforcing decisions of the appropriate international sports federation and the arbitral tribunal that had upheld the federation's decision. The Harding case,3 which was also decided in the United States, demonstrates that adjudication outside the prescribed process of international sports law is fundamentally unstable.

In both the EU and the WTO there are currently pending cases on the legality of EU Regulation 1007/2009 on trade in seal products and its Implementing Regulation 737/2010. While seals seem to be very attractive to the public so that raising arguments against these EU measures are not popular, the Regulations do raise concerns about competences, subsidiarity and proportionality which are relevant for compliance with EU primary law. They also raise concerns about possible protectionism, the use of public morals, coherence and necessity with regard to compatibility with WTO law. This paper seeks to examine all these issues.

In 1976 the United Kingdom ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and extended it to Hong Kong. Under the Covenant the United Kingdom assumed an obligation to submit periodic reports to the Human Rights Committee on the measures it has adopted to give effect to the rights recognised by the Covenant and on the progress made in the enjoyment of these rights.1 The United Kingdom has submitted four periodic reports on Hong Kong, in 1978,2 1988,3 19914 and 1995.5

International anticorruption treaties create an almost universal requirement that States sanction legal persons for the crime of foreign bribery. However, the vast majority of corporate foreign bribery cases are ‘settled’ between governments and firms. Analysing key anticorruption instruments and treaty body reports, it appears there is a dearth of express rules on settlements in international law but a qualified implicit endorsement of domestic settlement laws and practices. The international regime is investigated in terms of its move towards common standards for the use of settlements, and whether recommendations are consistent with stated objectives. The analysis discloses an irony: States and international organisations fail to clearly articulate their expectations on settlements, while calling for transparent, effective and predictable domestic settlement rules.

Human rights are one of the great ideas of the twentieth century. After World War II, first Eleanor Roosevelt in relation to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (‘the Universal Declaration’), and then later the drafters of the European Convention on Human Rights (‘the European Convention’) saw human rights as the way to make the world fairer and safer.

Until relatively recently the question of whether it is possible to get damages for breach of an exclusive jurisdiction clause was very rarely considered by the courts and had attracted little academic interest. But when considered alongside recent developments in cases covered by the Brussels regime, the subject becomes of potentially much greater practical significance. The main purpose of this article is to consider how the newly developing common law principles might apply in that context.

The title of this article1 is drawn from Sir Hersch Lauterpacht's famous monograph, published in 1933, entitled The Function of Law in the International Community.2 Writing in a decade when the shattering effects of the physical destruction wrought by World War I were giving way to the debilitating effects of the Great Depression, and when the invasions of Manchuria and Abyssinia would sit side-by-side with the rise of Fascism in Germany and the great Stalinist terror in Russia, Lauterpacht was, not unnaturally, seeking a better way to a peaceful future under the Rule of Law. At that time, the recently established International Court in The Hague was dealing with acutely political cases, such as the question of the compatibility of the Austro-German Customs Union with the post-war peace settlement;3 and the cool rationality of debate in the Peace Palace seemed to offer a better way.

In 2015, frustrated by the slow pace of negotiations in the International Maritime Organisation, the EU issued Regulation 2015/757 on the monitoring, reporting, and verification of carbon dioxide emissions from maritime transport. Echoing the controversial Aviation Directive, the Regulation is intended to support a unilateral market-based measure, and includes emissions from outside EU territory. This raises the question whether, according to international law, the EU has jurisdiction to regulate such ‘extraterritorial’ circumstances. In exploring the appropriate jurisdictional bases, we argue that neither the Law of the Sea Convention, nor world trade law definitively decide this issue. We therefore devote more detailed attention to the customary international law of State jurisdiction supplementing these regimes. We seek to build on the existing analysis by examining climate change as a ‘common concern of mankind’. We argue that this emerging concept has distinct legal implications that can and should be accommodated within the interest-balancing exercise underlying the jurisdictional analysis.

The EU's Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) was conceived of as an area ill-suited for full judicial review by the Court of Justice of the European Union. The Lisbon Treaty confers on the Court limited jurisdiction which the recent case law has interpreted in broad terms. This article will place this case law in the broader constitutional setting of the EU legal order and will provide a critical analysis of its implications for both the EU's and domestic courts. The analysis is structured on the basis of three main themes. The first is about the position of CFSP in the EU's constitutional architecture: the article will analyse the constitutional ambivalence that characterizes this position and how it is conveyed by the provisions of the Treaty on the European Union and the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union governing the Court's jurisdiction. The second theme is about the recent case law, and the integrationist approach that the Court of Justice has adopted to the scope of its jurisdiction. The third theme is about national courts: the article will argue that recent case law has been too quick to dismiss them, and that primary law renders them an essential part of the judicial review system governing CFSP.

This paper examines whether the evolving jurisprudence on necessity as developed by the WTO adjudicatory bodies reflects the same balance between trade liberalization and regulatory autonomy as that contained in the WTO treaty texts, particularly with regard to the GATT. It is argued that a divergence can be observed which raises questions of competence, legitimacy and transparency. Specific amendments to the prevailing test are also proposed in order to achieve what the author suggests is a textually consistent, and thus legitimate, necessity test of equal efficacy.

The EU and the US have long called for the linking of trade and labour standards in trade agreements at both the multilateral and bilateral level. This article examines their practice of including labour provisions in trade agreements, with a particular focus on recent attempts to include such provisions on so-called ‘mega-regionals’, which were presented by their proponents as providing the benchmark for labour protection in future trade agreements. It discusses the rationale behind the inclusion of such provisions and their practical limitations, and examines the extent to which mega-regionals address these limitations. It is argued that whilst the EU and the US have been keen advocates for trade-labour linkages, there has also been an unwillingness to convert this rhetoric into practice, raising questions about the extent of their commitment to these values.

This paper seeks to explore the relationship between the framework of transition and the enactment of a new constitution for Egypt. It does so by using the relatively under explored concept of transitional constitutionalism, interrogating some of the key claims on which transitional constitutionalism is based, and questioning their application in the Egyptian context. By doing this the paper explores the broader paradox of the imposition of a framework of transition that is rooted in principles of liberalism in the context where liberalism is far from the agreed or prevailing political model.

Prior to the rise of international investment treaties and institutionalization of investor–state arbitration, the protection of foreign investors from mistreatment in the host state courts was the preserve of customary international law, which prohibited a denial of justice and provided for diplomatic protection as a principal means of dispute settlement. In contrast, contemporary international investment law offers a whole array of legal standards that can be invoked in seeking redress for the acts of national courts before international arbitral tribunals. In addition to relying on the customary prohibition of denial of justice, investors can challenge judicial conduct under the treaty standards on expropriation, fair and equitable treatment and, in some cases, the obligation to ensure effective means of asserting claims. Although the multiplicity of standards available to aggrieved investors can be regarded as an inalienable part of an effective regime for the protection of foreign investment, it also gives rise to a number of fundamental problems relating to the application of procedural mechanisms designed to control the review of the conduct of national judiciary by international courts and tribunals. Focusing on arbitral cases in which claims of a denial of justice were brought under the rubric of ‘a judicial expropriation’ and ‘a failure to provide effective means of asserting claims’, this article seeks to ascertain when investor claims relating to the administration of justice in the host state courts become amenable to arbitral scrutiny. It argues that, by providing a variety of standards under which the acts of judiciary can be challenged, investment treaty law allows investors to circumvent procedural barriers and thus muddles the boundaries demarcating the scope of international review of national judicial conduct.