International law recognizes two mechanisms for the protection of individuals in case of violations of peremptory norms affecting individuals: invocation of State responsibility erga omnes and diplomatic protection. While they share some fields of applications and are both based on some measure of indirect injury, there are important differences between these two mechanisms. This paper analyses and discusses these differences and similarities, and concludes by demonstrating that the essential distinction is to be found in the legal interest in the claim and the nature of the claim. The traditional conditions for the bringing of a claim based on indirect injury that are applicable to diplomatic protection (exhaustion of local remedies and nationality of claims) are not applicable to invocation of responsibility erga omnes. This paper will argue that the latter is based on an obligation owed to the community as a whole, including the claimant State, and therefore constitutes a direct claim. In the interest of enhancing protection of individuals against violations of peremptory norms, the simultaneous existence of these two mechanisms should be welcomed.

In recent years there has been a trend towards independent and more transparent ethical regulation for sitting judges, which is said to promote public confidence in the judicial institution, and reflect a move towards accountability and transparency as judicial values. However, regimes governing sitting judges largely fall away when the judge retires from the bench. Increasing longevity and rising numbers of former judges raise complex ethical regulation questions. Drawing on judicial ethics regimes in England and Wales, Australia, the United States and New Zealand, and instances where the conduct of former judges has reflected poorly on the integrity of the judiciary, this article argues that there are strong reasons for extending ethics regulation beyond judicial retirement. By reference to the principles that inform the rules regulating the conduct of sitting judges, we investigate the extent to which misconduct and disciplining regimes should extend to former judges, and whether there is a stronger role for soft instruments and more formalized processes for regulating former judges. In doing so, we propose a model for the development of ethical regulation for former judges.

Against a background of increasingly intense legal harmonisation and with the prospects of Central European accession to the EU drawing ever closer, a recent decision of the Hungarian Constitutional Court, Dec.30/1998 (VI.25) AB1 has highlighted the constitutional implications of applying EC law in the domestic system of an associate state. The judgment itself concerned the constitutionality of the competition provisions of the EC-Hungary Europe Agreement (“EA”) together with Decision 2/96 of the Association Council on the relevant Implementing Rules (“IR”). While the Hungarian court is not the first of its type in an associate state to deal with the effect internally of an Association Agreement,2 nevertheless its decision offers certain insights into the judicial response to the integration process in Central Europe.

Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights provides:

1. Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief, in worship, teaching, practice and observance.

2. Freedom to manifest one's religion or beliefs shall be subject only to such limitations as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society in the interests of public safety, for the protection of public order, health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.

Osama Bin Laden was killed on 2 May 2011 in the course of an operation by US special forces (Navy Seals) in Abbottabad, Pakistan.1 The US forces were flown by helicopter from neighbouring Afghanistan. The death of Bin Laden renewed questions about the legality of such operations during armed conflicts and during peacetime.2 The potentially applicable law includes international humanitarian law, international human rights law, jus ad bellum and the domestic law of the US and Pakistan.3

In a variety of investment arbitration cases, respondent States have argued that measures impugned by investors were mandated by that State's human rights obligations. Tribunals have generally been reluctant to engage with such arguments and to interpret the relationship between investment law and human rights in a straightforward manner. This article discusses two other possibilities: harmonious interpretation and prioritization. Harmonious interpretation seeks to read provisions from investment treaties and human rights treaties together, whereas prioritization gives normative superiority to one provision over another. We conclude that harmonious interpretation is facilitated by the discretionary character of common treaty standards in both human rights and investment law, but that the final result is unlikely to be very different from prioritization, because even harmonious interpretation requires that one provision is read in the light of, and thereby subjugated to, the other.

The case of Pinochet has aroused enormous interest, both political and legal. The spectacle of the General, whose regime sent so many to their deaths, himself under arrest and standing trial has stirred the hopes of the oppressed. His reversal of fortune, loss of liberty with a policeman, on the door, has been heralded by organisations for the protection of human rights as one small step on the long road to justice. For lawyers generally, the House of Lords' majority decision of 1998 that General Pinochet enjoyed no immunity signalled a shift from a State-centred order of things.1 It suggested that the process of restriction of State immunity, so effectively begun with the removal of commercial transactions from its protection, might now extend some way into the field of criminal proceedings. And it further posed the intriguing question whether an act categorised as within the exercise of sovereign power, so as to relieve the individual official of liability in civil proceedings, may at the same time, as well as subsequent to his retirement, attract parallel personal criminal liability.

Public participation in international environmental decision-making can seek to fulfil different goals. This article explains how these goals can affect the design and appraisal of participatory processes and highlights the under-recognised value of law in determining the objectives of public participation in international environmental forums. A doctrinal analysis finds that substantive goals are most prominent in current international environmental law, but that a normative rationale for public participation could be gaining more formal endorsement through the growing legal recognition of linkages between procedural human rights and environmental protection.

Two conflicting forces beset any attempts to fit responsibility for environmental matters into modern constitutional structures. On the one hand the political desire for less centralised government calls for devolution of power to regional or local authorities, so that responsibilities are divided and distributed between different levels of government. On the other, the fact that no aspect of the environment can be treated as if it were a separate compartment suggests that responsibilities should be integrated in one place, an approach supported by the increasing awareness that there is a need for environmental considerations to influence all areas of policy if the goal of sustainable development is to be achieved. Fitting responses to the conditions1 of a particular locality is an important element in successful environmental policy, but so is ensuring that a coherent and holistic approach is taken, unhindered by institutional divisions.2 The purpose of this paper is to examine how two structures of devolved administration, for the Autonomous Communities in Spain and for Scotland, meet the challenge of reconciling these opposite forces, and how the constitutional structures influence the way in which potential problems are resolved.

This paper assesses whether English law recognizes a concept of negotiorum gestio. Claimants intervening in other' affairs and seeking restitution or reimbursement of expenses are often labeled ‘officious’, and disallowed relief. That, however, gives a misleading impression of English law. English law does recognize a concept of negotiorum gestio, which while very different to that found in German law, has parallels to versions found in other Civilian systems. It provides a cause of action to recover the intervenor's expenses, and any loss suffered during the intervention. It also provides a defence to the intervenor's intentional torts, although negligent intervenors will remain liable for their negligence

An earlier note in this series' gave an account of the normalisation of relations between the United Kingdom and Argentina and the establishment of co-operative arrangements relating to fisheries in 1990. The present note focuses on the establishment of co-operative arrangements for seabed resources in 1995. It also gives a brief account of the extension of maritime jurisdiction around South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands in 1993. First, in order to set the co-operative arrangements for seabed resources in context, a brief recapitulation of the cooperative arrangements for fisheries and their operation in practice since 1990 will be given. The map appended to the article illustrates and enlarges on the text.

The human and environmental consequences of big development projects such as large dams have been a focus of increasing attention in many countries. Large-scale involuntary resettlement caused by such projects has become particularly contentious in a number of situations. In India where many large dams have been and are being built, the Sardar Sarovar dam on the Narmada river has been at the centre of a storm for over a decade. The latest development in the history of this project is the judgment given by the Supreme Court of India on 18 October 2000 adjudicating a public interest litigation petition filed by the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA—Save the Narmada Movement). This decision is of great significance not only for the project itself but also from a broader perspective.

On 29 March 2010, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), sitting as a Grand Chamber, delivered its Judgment in the Medvedyev v France case, which involved the interdiction and the exercise of enforcement jurisdiction over a drug smuggling vessel on the high seas. The case was referred by both the applicants and the Respondent State to the Grand Chamber, following the Judgment of a Chamber of the Fifth Section of the Court, on 10 July 2008. The Grand Chamber accepted this referral and the public hearing took place on 6 May 2009. This decision is of considerable importance as one of the very few decisions of the Strasbourg Court which has touched upon issues pertaining to the law of the sea, let alone to interdiction of vessels on the high seas, and the only case to have found a violation of the Convention on the part of the interdicting State, namely France.

The practice of imposing economic sanctions in order to influence the actions of states and other parties—historically with varied levels of actual effectiveness—has a long and chequered history.2 Given, however, that more than 90 per cent of the world's trade is carried by sea,3 it is one particular form of sanction management—the ‘so called economic weapon’ of naval blockade— which tends to dominate the implementation of sanctions regimes.4 Yet despite the frequency with which naval forces are used to implement maritime sanctions—or perhaps because of the long but erratic history of naval embargo and blockade—the regime as a whole remains haunted by some uncertainties as to its conceptual basis. As WL Martin observes, ‘some measures such as “pacific blockade”, have at times acquired a technical meaning’ which has left them ill-equipped to deal with and adjust to new developments in blockade practice.5 Even prior to 1914, the notion of ‘blockade’ was a dualist concept. On one hand, it was clearly a weapon of war.6

We are indebted to Professor Brian Simpson, in his brilliant work on executive detension in wartime Britain,1 for giving greater prominence to a very characteristic and memorable Churchillian utterance:

The centuries old problem of protecting minorities with in multicultural states through international law is a recognised contemporary global issue.2 Minority protection schemes constitute an important facet in the arsenal of techniques available to states and international policy-makers in managing the potentially destabilising effects of nationalist aspirations, where manifested in ethnic conflict.3 These aspirations range from minimalist claims for personal autonomy to maximalist claims for spatial autonomy, even independent statehood.

The second half of the twentieth century saw major improvements in the legal regime for fisheries management. This notwithstanding, the deep seas remain largely unregulated under international law, until recently only being covered by the general environmental and management provisions found in UNCLOS. In light of this regulatory gap, this article evaluates the potential law-making effects, if any, of the FAO Deep-Sea Fisheries Guidelines, a voluntary instrument designed to provide States with a regulatory framework for the management of their deep-sea fisheries. It considers how the Guidelines may inform, interpret and influence the content of the general high-sea obligations in UNCLOS. Despite the vagueness and generality of those provisions, some indication of their substantive content has been given in recent decisions, particularly the South China Sea Arbitration. By assessing their compatibility, and their level of acceptance by the international community, this article argues that the FAO Deep-Sea Guidelines are beginning to have a law-making effect by providing an authoritative interpretation of the general high-sea obligations found in UNCLOS relating to deep-sea fisheries.