We have now had three years' experience with the dispute-settlement process of the World Trade Organization (WTO), which came into existence as a result of the Uruguay Round of trade negotiations on 1 January 1995. By any objective standard, this system of dispute settlement is a resounding success. Well over 100 cases have been brought to the WTO, and, as at the end of 1997, 25 cases had been settled at the consultation stage, 61 were under consultations and 36 were in or beyond the panel-appeal process. The newly created Appellate Body has decided nine cases, the quality of its opinions as well as those of the dispute-settlement panels is generally excellent. Member States of the WTO are complying with the rulings and recommendations adopted by the Dispute Settlement Body of the WTO.

The 1990s have been characterised by the globalisation of markets and the internationalisation of trade. Countries seem to be more interested than ever in creating new trading blocs and strengthening existing ones. As perhaps the most developed integration group in the world, the European Union has been used by framers of many other integration processes as a model on which to design their own institutional and legal structures.

The twelfth edition of Dicey & Morris, The Conflict of Laws (hereafter Dicey & Morris) appeared in 1993 under the general editorship of Dr Lawrence Collins and with Professors Trevor C. Hartley, J. D. McClean and C. G. J. Morse as specialist editors. It has since been updated by a yearly cumulative supplement; the latest is from 1997. The book takes in the whole province of private international law and is rich in material and ideas. It shows how English lawyers have reacted to the outside world without forgetting that the conflict of laws has an international character. Its students consider it to be a noble science. As Arthur Nussbaum said, the student of private international law “feels himself, as it were, a member of an international community of learning. He will have to study foreign legal ideas and will thereby obtain insight into the variety and interplay of heterogeneous legal concepts and ideas all over the world.”

It is sometimes asked whether English private international law has a theory, or, if it has a theory, what this actually means. This may be a question for some, but it may have no answer. The purpose of this article is to take issue with the claim, sometimes made, that since Spiliada1 the subject has become less theoretical. To be sure, the deplorable quality of recent law reform lends powerful support to the proposition that concern for the theory of the subject (indeed, any form of reflective intelligence) has been notably lacking. But Spiliada may have been one of those defining moments in which the large theory of the English conflict of laws underwent a dramatic change and shone a light into areas of the subject which had been peacefully gathering dust.

History suggests that a military alliance will rarely survive major political change that results in the disappearance of the original danger that the alliance was first set up to combat. Since 1989 the reshaping of the political and strategic map of Europe has proceeded on a scale and at a pace such as to give rise to an expectation that the North Atlantic Alliance would become a victim of historical inevitability and thus be either formally dissolved or left to atrophy. Instead, the North Atlantic Alliance has embarked on a root and branch transformation of its structures, procedures and strategies for the twenty-first century. What is equally remarkable is that these changes have been accommodated within the framework of the original text of the North Atlantic Treaty drawn up in 1949,1 thus obviating the need for large-scale formal amendment.

“Until comparatively recently, intellectual property rights were viewed as entirely national in scope and effect … the courts here could not and would not try issues of validity and infringement of foreign intellectual property rights.” The recent developments that Laddie J was referring to have led to the High Court exercising a much expanded jurisdiction in cases of intellectual property infringements and international litigation. These developments mean that there is yet another reason why international litigants could be attracted to the English courts. However, they have also led to new battles for territory fought out across the North Sea.

Every member State of the United Nations is a party to the Statute (the Statute) of the International Court of Justice (the Court or ICJ).1 In addition, a non-member State may also become a party to the Statute.2 The Court is open to the States parties to the Statute.3 As to those States that are not parties to the Statute, Article 35(2) of the Statute provides:

The conditions under which the Court shall be open to other states shall, subject to the special provisions contained in treaties in force, be laid down by the Security Council, but in no case shall such conditions place the parties in a position of inequality before the Court.

The importance of the safe and environmentally sound management of radioactive wastes had been strongly reaffirmed by the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. This question was dealt with in Chapter 22 on “safe and environmentally sound management of radioactive wastes” of Agenda 21, adopted at the time of the Conference, which specifically referred to the necessity for States to “support efforts within IAEA to develop and promulgate radioactive wastes safety standards or guidelines and codes of practice as an internationally accepted basis for the safe and environmentally sound management and disposal of radioactive waste”. This political statement was probably the first step in the process which has led to the adoption, in September 1997, of the Joint Convention on the Safety of Spent Fuel Management and on the Safety of Radioactive Waste Management (hereafter the “Joint Convention”). In 1994 the importance of elaborating safety standards for radioactive waste management appears again in the Convention on Nuclear Safety of 20 September 1994, the Preamble to which (paragraph ix) reads: “Affirming the need to begin promptly the development of an international convention on the safety of radioactive waste management as soon as the ongoing process to develop waste management safety fundamentals has resulted in broad international agreement.”

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.

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

On the premise that democratic government is founded, inter alia, on the accountability of public bodies and their officials, as well as on the popular participation in collective decision-making by the governed at all levels of government, there is merit in the proposition that it is improper to curb open debate, especially in matters which are of public interest. In so far as the work of the judiciary in general, and of judges in particular, is in the public domain and thus of public interest, the value of the freedom of expression applies, in principle, with equal force. Freedom of expression in the legal domain and in relation to the work of judges serves a variety of useful purposes in democratic society. Freedom of expression serves to uphold the integrity of the principles of democracy which require that governmental institutions should be transparent and accountable, and in that sense the judicial domain, very much like other branches of government, benefits from a healthy exchange and interaction of opinions. The administration of justice is better served by well-informed participants than by ignorance, and freedom of expression can contribute to a full and rigorous assessment of information in the judicial context Similarly, in modern democratic society, all individuals, but especially legal journalists, lawyers and other officials of the legal establishment, contribute to the architecture of judicial policy through the expression of their opinions. Freedom of expression in this context can also prove to be an instrument of individual and professional self-fulfilment. This is considered crucial in any society which is dependent upon the participation of the people.

Nato enlargement and related processes belong to subject matters in which law has a highly sensitive political content and its implementation is greatly dependent on the political environment. It is asserted that in such areas law is subordinate to political considerations or even that such matters may be outside the domain of international law and lawyers altogether.

Formerly, EC activity in the area of private law used to be content with approximating member States' substantive laws in specified areas, and, therefore, eventual conflictual implications demanded considerable interpretative efforts. Modern Community legislation, however, increasingly complements the intended substantive-law harmonisation with provisions on conflict of laws. Given the existence of the (Rome) Convention on the Law Applicable to Contractual Obligations, implemented in the United Kingdom by the Contracts (Applicable Law) Act 1990, this new tendency, where it concerns areas falling within the Convention, raises complex questions on both legislative technique and policy. The Convention, in Article 20, expressly reserves the precedence of Community choice of law rules. However, merely to point to this priority rule appears to be too simple a solution as conflicts, before being solved, have to be defined, and that is what this article aims at. Further, as an analysis that deals with European law would be incomplete without taking into account the impact on member States' law, reference will be made to domestic English and, for the purposes of comparison, to domestic German law. The latter appears to qualify for such a comparative approach because, due to the Rome Convention already having been part of the domestic law for a considerable period, certain experience might be expected within that legal system in dealing with contract conflicts issues thereunder.

The Private International Law (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1995 introduced major reform to the common law choice of rule in delict/tort under Scots/English law respectively. To all intents and purposes, and in the face of sustained and strong criticism, the Act abandoned the common law rules based on double actionability with exceptions. The primary rule under the statute would appear to state that the applicable law is to be based on the general concept of the lex loci delicti. It is of some significance for the analysis here that the statute does not in fact utilise that Latin expression as it is indeed unclear that the expression has any technical meaning. Indeed, the provisions of the Act seek, but in the end fail, to achieve a greater degree of certainty than that rather nebulous though “right-minded” concept. Significantly, a principal objective of the reforms was to ensure that the lex fori no longer played a primary role in choice of law for delictual/tortious claims in private international law. Of course, doubts remain as to the likelihood of direct resort to the lex fori via potential escape devices provided for in the Act The two most likely stages for this arise during characterisation and later when the lex fori may be applied qua public policy.

The dispute between Hungary and Slovakia concerning the Gabcïkovo-Nagymaros project could easily be described as one of the most important cases to come before the International Court of Justice (“the Court”) in recent years. The case raised a number of very important questions of international law, many of which had received no previous consideration in the Court's jurisprudence. In the first place, the Court was asked by both parties for orders of specific performance. Although the competence of the Court to issue orders of specific performance or injunctive relief had been the subject matter of much discussion in the academic literature, the issue had never before been raised squarely before the Court. Second, this was the first dispute in which the Court was directly asked to consider the consequences of the legal developments in the field of environmental protection. Despite the proliferation of treaty developments in that field, the status of many of those norms remains problematic Third, although the relationship between the law of treaties and the law of State responsibility has generated much general interest, the Court had not in the past been presented with an opportunity to pronounce on some of these issues. Finally, this is also one of the few cases in which the Court has been asked to consider the legal implications of State succession outside the context of decolonisation.

In the wholesale financial markets, enormous exposures are collateralised by interests in immobilised securities. Such collateral may be provided under a security interest, or by way of outright transfer.1 The collateral taker is always concerned to ensure that its interest in the collateral assets will be enforceable, not just against the collateral giver but also against third parties such as other creditors of the collateral giver. This is particularly important in the insolvency of the collateral giver, in order to ensure that the collateral taker ranks above ordinary creditors. Rights in assets which bind third parties are generally characterised as property rights, and the general approach in conflict of laws is to refer questions concerning the acquisition of property rights to the law of the place where the asset in question is located, or lex situs. In relation to interests in immobilised securities, this simple rule presents a challenge in practice, as the location of interests in immobilised securities may not be immediately obvious. This article suggests that the legal location of such interests is the office of the clearing system where the account recording such interests is maintained. This accords with the provisions of Article 9(2) of the Finality Directive, which has yet to be implemented in the United Kingdom.

The Third Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (Climate Change Convention) was held from 1 to 11 December 1997 at Kyoto, Japan. Significantly the States Parties to the Convention adopted a protocol (Kyoto Protocol) on 11 December 1997 under which industrialised countries have agreed to reduce their collective emissions of six greenhouse gases by at least 5 per cent by 2008–2012. Ambassador Raul Estrada-Oyuela, who had chaired the Committee of the Whole established by the Conference to facilitate the negotiation of a Protocol text, expressed the view that: “This agreement will have a real impact on the problem of greenhouse gas emissions. Today should be remembered as the Day of the Atmosphere.” This note seeks to outline in brief the science of climate change, and international activity to combat global warming prior to the Kyoto conference. It then attempts to analyse the terms of the Kyoto Protocol and to draw some conclusions on its significance.

It has rightly been observed that every society “faces a delicate problem when it has to determine how its judges are appointed, especially the members of the senior courts and tribunals”. For, while it is usually recognised that judges should be independent, at the same time those in power may prefer judges who are not too independent, in the sense that they more or less share the general political orientation of government.

The death of Diana, Princess of Wales, following a car accident in Paris on 31 August 1997, received worldwide media attention. The place of the accident as well as the circumstances thereof raise a number of legal questions. Of particular interest from a comparative tort law perspective are those aspects of the French enquiry that concern the civil implications of the criminal offence of failing to assist accident victims.2