Discovery is the broad name for interlocutory skirmishing whose object is to secure information concerning the particular case at issue. While documentary and oral discovery concurrently exist as of right in other jurisdictions, such as Canada and the US, the scope of this pre-trial procedure is narrower in Britain where the general availability of oral interrogatories is precluded. Like discovery in England and Wales, Scots law farmer restricts the procedure by making the ‘Specification of Documents procedure’ subject to the Court's discretion. This article explores some of the differences from a comparative viewpoint and attempts to evaluate the Scottish practice.

It so happens that this is the 25th anniversary of the adoption of the Treaty on Legal Principles Governing die Activities of States in die Exploration and Use of Outer Space including die Moon and other Celestial Bodies. On 19 December 1966 die General Assembly of die United Nations unanimously adopted a resolution commending the Treaty; on 27 January 1967 the Treaty was signed simultaneously in Moscow, London and Washington. As one who presided over die work of die Legal Sub-Committee leading to die conclusion of that Treaty it may be timely for me to recall some of the events and developments preceding its adoption.

In this article the concept of dwaling will be examined in comparison with the English doctrine of misrepresentation. Dwaling — like misrepresentation — plays a role in the formation of the contract and concerns the intention of the parties to create legal relations. The concept of dwaling under Dutch law has been developed from a traditional ‘defect of the will’, a ‘vice of consent’ where the main emphasis is on the error of the mistaken party, to a legal concept with the emphasis on the false precontractual statement of fact made by the other party or his failure to disclose information. This evolution of dwaling through the years may be traced in s. 6:228 of the new Civil Code (CC) which came into force on 1 January 1992.

The publication of the arbitral award in the Asian Agricultural Products Ltd. (AAPL) v. Republic of Sri Lanka case serves as a forceful reminder that long after individual confrontations in the Sri Lankan civil war are removed from the headlines, the personal, legal and financial consequences of mat country's tragedy shall continue to bedevil the society. In this case, AAPL, formerly a foreign investor in Sri Lanka, claimed damages against the Government for destruction of property arising out of military operations undertaken by official security forces. The Tribunal, by a majority, found in favour of the claimant, but did so only after a fairly lengthy review both of canons of treaty interpretation in international law and of principles of State responsibility for actions undertaken during civil unrest More specifically, because the proceedings were instituted under the United Kingdom/Sri Lanka Bilateral Investment Treaty of 1980, the primary focus of the Tribunal's attention concerned the applicability of particular provisions of mat treaty to circumstances of military and paramilitary activity; at the same time, the military background to the case also prompted the Tribunal to give broad consideration to the standard of diligence owed by government forces to foreign investors under general international law.

Traditionally, Latin American countries have put emphasis in their foreign policy on principles such as national sovereignty, territorial integrity and nonintervention as well as on the primacy of national law and domestic courts. In their relations with Europe and the United States this policy served as a political and legal shield for defending their political and economic independence and their freedom to regulate their own affairs. With respect to the particular issue of foreign investment regulation, it served as the legal foundation for an attempt to subject foreign investors exclusively to the national law and the jurisdiction of the courts of the country in which they invest or operate. Thus, each Latin American country sought to equate foreign investors and its own nationals for the purpose of investment regulation. Therefore, this policy is also called the ‘national standard’. It is closely associated with the name of the nineteenth-century Argentinian lawyer, Carlos Calvo.