The emergence and importance of private standards in contemporary regulatory governance have been the subject of extensive debate. Recent studies have attempted to explore several dimensions of private regulation, such as its growth or effectiveness. By contrast, this article focuses on the regulatory diffusion of private standards. There has been a broad range of literature on diffusion and reception of norms—for instance, the scholarship of legal transplants or law's migration addressed how international treaties or foreign national laws were received in States. However, norm exportation and importation does not only occur between States; this article focuses on regulatory diffusion between private actors. To do so, it examines the case of GLOBALG.A.P., a private food safety scheme started in Europe that has influenced private standard initiatives beyond Europe. This article concludes by emphasizing that successful regulatory diffusion requires taking local contexts into account and preserving diversity.

This case1 marks the first pronouncement by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on the obligation to extradite or prosecute (aut dedere aut judicare) in international law. It is the second contentious case in which the ICJ has held the defendant country in breach of its obligations under a human rights convention. The ICJ both added to the corpus of norms it has formally recognized as peremptory norms (jus cogens) and also reinforced the principle that former heads of state are subject to universal jurisdiction for grave violations of international law.

Ceuta, Melilla, Vélez de la Gomera, Alhucemas and the Chafarinas Islands are Spanish territories that lie along Morocco's northern coastline. Morocco has claimed the territories since its independence in 1956. The sovereignty of a further territory, the islet of Perejil, remains unresolved after a military confrontation between Morocco and Spain in 2002. The author examines the arguments in the ongoing sovereignty dispute. Morocco's claim to Ceuta and Melilla is found to be weak. However, its claim to the remaining territories may be supported by the analogous case of São João Baptista de Ajudá, an unpopulated Portuguese fortress territory in Dahomey (Benin) that was singled out for ‘statutory decolonization’ by the UN.

This article explores the question whether the territorial application of a treaty extends to unlawfully annexed territory. In this context, it examines State succession and the territorial application of treaties under general international law, as well as the moving treaty-frontiers rule and the extraterritorial application of certain treaties, specifically with respect to annexed territory. The article concludes that, while in some cases there is scope to find that a treaty applies extraterritorially in annexed territory, notably as a result of its object and purpose or its provisions, there may also be room, subject to the provisions of the treaty, for a limited form of treaty succession in such territory. Limitations to the obligation of collective non-recognition offer theoretical and practical support for this position.

This article seeks to make sense of two seemingly contradictory aspects of the General Assembly's practice: its history of recommending to States that they impose unilateral sanctions; and its series of resolutions denouncing unilateral coercive measures as illegal. It examines the seeming discrepancy between the customary international law position regarding unilateral sanctions, and the position asserted by the Assembly, and argues that on a nuanced reading of the Assembly's resolutions, these positions are not so divergent as is often supposed. The article concludes by examining the scope for the Assembly to make future sanctions recommendations, consistently with its prior condemnation of unilateral coercive measures.

This article provides an analysis of the normative framework for Spanish cannabis clubs by contextualizing it within the growing body of comparative constitutional law that recognizes legal obstructions to personal drug consumption as intrusions of the right to privacy. Article 3(2) of the United Nations Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances, 1988 relieves State parties from the Article's obligation to criminalize drug possession and cultivation for ‘personal consumption’ when doing so would conflict with their constitution or basic concepts of their legal system. Spain relied on Article 3(2) in its decision not to criminalize conduct involving personal consumption. The Spanish judiciary has had to consider the legal implications of collective consumption and cultivation in the form of cannabis clubs. In addition to operating in a grey area of domestic law, Spain's cannabis clubs straddle the blurred boundary in international and European legal instruments between ‘personal consumption’ and ‘drug trafficking’. This article explores the theoretical and doctrinal implications of both Spanish law on cannabis clubs and comparative human rights law on drug use to outline the potential contours of a constitutionally protected zone of privacy pertaining to cannabis use in a social context.

In his Fourth Report on the Identification of Customary International Law (2016), Special Rapporteur Sir Michael Wood confirmed that ‘[i]n certain cases, the practice of international organizations also contributes to the expression, or creation, of rules of customary international law’. That the practice of international organizations can be relevant when identifying customary international law is relatively uncontroversial. The issue that is more debated is the extent to which the practice of international organizations as such may contribute to the development of customary international law. Using examples from the European Union's treaty practice and from the Court of Justice of the European Union, this article argues that international organizations may contribute to such practice, not only by representing the collective will of States, but as autonomous actors in their own right.

The voluntary assignment of contractual (and non-contractual) obligations in conflict of laws is governed by article 14 of the Rome I Regulation. Under this, the validity of the assignment as between the assignor and assignee is governed by the law applicable to the contract between them (paragraph 1 of article 14). On the other hand, the assignability of the claim and the relationship between the debtor and the assignee are governed by the law applicable to the obligation assigned (paragraph 2 of article 14). Certain issues are, however, outside the scope of article 14 as it stands at present. These are the question of priorities between competing assignments (if the same obligation is assigned twice to different assignees) and the rights of third parties (mainly creditors of the assignor). This article examines the precise scope of the two existing paragraphs and considers the arguments that might be relevant in deciding what law should govern the issues at present not covered by either paragraph, a question that has become more pressing in view of the fact that negotiations will soon begin on a possible amendment of article 14 to deal with it.

The outcome of the litigation before the International Court of Justice can be seriously affected by the Court's treatment of the parties' submissions, not just because the Court's disregard of the submission of the party can affect the legal rights of that party. The final decision can end up being substantially different from what most people would expect. This happened, for instance, in some cases in which much was at stake, such as Arrest Warrant, Oil Platforms or Legality of the Use of Force. The reasoning and outcome of these cases, involving the issues of the use of force and the account-ability for serious violations of human rights and humanitarian law, was important not merely for the parties' rights and interests, but also had a wider dimension of clarifying the applicable law on the important questions that very frequently arises within the international legal system and affects its operation and efficiency. It is therefore crucial to ascertain what the Court's powers are in dealing with the parties' submissions and if such powers are subject to certain limits.

The conclusion of the Uruguay Round and the establishment of the World Trade Organisation raised one of the most touchy issues of the European architecture, notably the division of powers between the Community and the member States in the field of international economic relations. The dispute was settled by the European Court of Justice in Opinion 1/94, which was delivered on 15 November 1994.1 Although more than a year has passed since its publication, there are still a number of good reasons to explore the findings of the Court in Opinion 1/94 from the point of view of the Community constitution.

On 31 March 2005 the Security Council made its first referral to the International Criminal Council (‘the ICC’). The Council referred the situation in Darfur to the Prosecutor of the ICC. Given the USA's stated opposition to the ICC, that there was a referral at all could be seen as a triumph for the Court.s supporters. However, Security Council Resolution 1593 has a number of problematic features. Its genesis was long and convoluted, and it has been seen by some as a substitute for effective action by the United Nations to end the humanitarian crisis and systematic atrocities being committed in Darfur.

Few decisions of the European Court of Justice have received as much attention as the 1999 judgement in Centros.1 This decision provided private international lawyers with an opportunity to examine choice of law in relation to companies against the background of European law. It also caused company lawyers to re-examine their national legislation in the light of foreign rules.

In Europe part of the rule-making and the whole enforcement of financial services regulation still take place at national level. For this reason, mutual recognition of national financial laws remains an element of central importance in the creation and regulation of a European market in this field. This article seeks to contribute to the analysis of such legal instrument, as several aspects of its functioning often appear unclear. The article starts by analysing the principle of mutual recognition as developed by the European Court of Justice. An important distinction is drawn between such judicially created principle and the principle of mutual recognition applied by the EC legislator. The article then looks at the question of why mutual recognition has not succeeded as a regulatory mechanism of financial services market integration, and at the role of mutual recognition after the introduction of the so-called ‘Lamfalussy’ law-making process to the financial services sector.

The WTO Agreement on Agriculture was designed to maximize trade flows at a time of surplus agricultural production. It required Members to open markets and to reduce domestic and export subsidies. Proposals for reform in the Doha Round negotiations largely adopt the same pattern. Yet, as surplus is replaced by shortage, Members are increasingly concerned about food security and the impact of agriculture on climate change. And contemporary agricultural policies crystallize around ‘sustainable intensification’, where domestic production is promoted, but not at the expense of future production. This article suggests that, although both the Agreement on Agriculture and the Doha Round proposals do provide some scope for measures to address this new policy paradigm, there are instances where they may work actively against it.