Maritime interceptions continue as a fundamental dimension to external border controls against irregular migration, as seen most recently in Australia's institution of Operation Sovereign Borders in late 2013. The practice of developed States has highlighted the varied application and interpretation of four bodies of international law: the law of the sea, search and rescue obligations, refugee obligations and international human rights law. This article assesses this practice and the use of laws, highlighting the fragmentation of international law that has resulted. A proposal is presented to harmonize these laws and reconcile the divergent policy perspectives of different stakeholders.

This paper critically evaluates ‘forum shopping’ possibilities offered by the UK and US in bankruptcy/insolvency cases. While recognizing that in some quarters forum shopping has a bad name, the paper makes the point that strategic manoeuvring and transaction planning is what litigation and case management is all about. Certain countries are popular as forum shopping venues because of substantive law or the procedural advantages brought about by litigating in that country. The paper concludes that while the UK may have shut its doors too firmly against foreign forum shoppers, the US is too much a safe haven. The paper calls for a measure of jurisdictional restraint through raising entry barriers. While a bit of jurisdictional competition in insolvency law-making may be no bad thing, the US approach runs the risk of undermining important policies considered important by other countries such as the protection of employees and the public purse. It is also asymmetrical in that US bankruptcy jurisdiction is assumed in situations where, if foreign countries had acted on a similar basis, US recognition of the foreign proceedings would be denied.

This article considers the effect of the Brussels I Regulation on the arbitration process in EU Member States. The Regulation says that it does not apply to arbitration, but it is unclear exactly what is excluded by this provision. The article first considers this question; it then discusses asset-freezing orders and antisuit injunctions in aid of arbitration and the granting of damages for bringing court proceedings before a court which, in the eyes of the court asked to grant the damages, ought not to hear the case. It finally discusses conflicts between judgments and arbitration awards.

This article revisits the core difficulties with the international delict known as a denial of justice and, drawing insights from philosophical writing on adjudication, offers novel solutions to three principal issues: (a) the scope of the acts and omissions that can form the predicate conduct for a denial of justice; (b) the proper threshold for liability in respect of those acts or omissions; (c) the relationship between denial of justice and other international norms impacting upon domestic adjudication. The article concludes with a restatement of the law of denial of justice.

Ownership is an essential feature of trusts that serves as a useful analytical and comparative tool in order to cross legal traditions and compare different legal institutions, which to a greater or lesser extent serve similar socio-economic and legal functions. The concentration on ownership enables one to burrow down into the normative roots of different legal traditions. This article comprises three substantive parts: first, characterizing ownership and the manner in which this concept distinguishes the civil and common law traditions; second, contextualizing ownership in relation to trusts from different legal systems; and, third, conceptualizing some contemporary challenges arising out of the divergent nature of ownership in the phenomenology of the trust paradigm, the value of the trust to comparative law and its effect on the civil law as a distinct tradition. It is argued that trusts necessarily involve the fiduciary administration of property and that ‘fiduciary ownership’ is a better shorthand description of the encumbered nature of trust property, rather than ‘dual’ or ‘split’ ownership, which is misleading and mistaken.

After the Lisbon Treaty, the objectives of the European Union are more numerous and ambitious than ever. But what is their importance and function within the ‘thickening’ legal order of the EU? Combining insights from both the law of international organizations and comparative constitutional law, the article traces the diverging role of objectives for, on the one hand, a traditional international organization marked by the principle of ‘speciality’ and, on the other, a maturing legal order increasingly exhibiting ‘constitutional’ traits. It argues that in the case of the EU, objectives and competences have developed into two related but distinct norm categories. While objectives serve to bolster arguments to shape such powers, they no longer represent a rationale in their own right for founding competences. The EU no longer justifies its existence solely by striving for a particular set of goals. Rather, these norms represent an entrenched duty to pursue these objectives through the actors, structures and procedures available, regardless of the Union's ultimate form (finalité). Today, the EU stands for certain values and has been endowed with powers, the exercise of which is guided by promoting these various aspects of the ‘common good’.

This article examines the effect of choice of law agreements on the courts’ exercise of jurisdiction. In particular, it considers whether English courts ought to exercise jurisdiction to uphold choice of law agreements that would otherwise be defeated in a competing forum. Two reasons have been advanced in support of this approach: that courts should prioritize the choice of law rules of the forum; and that the parties should be held to their agreement on the applicable law. This article argues that neither of these reasons is justifiable in principle.

The Nord Stream project, which comprises two natural gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea, eminently illustrates several of the ambiguities that pertain to the ability of coastal States to regulate the laying and operation of transit pipelines in their exclusive economic zone and, conversely, the extent of the right of other States to carry out such activities. A highly significant issue is how seabed surveys undertaken in preparation for the laying of pipelines should be characterized, and thus regulated, under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. What is to be considered a ‘reasonable measure’ by a coastal State is another crucial issue which, together with the extent of the requirement for consent by the coastal State for any specific pipeline route, are decisive for defining the balance between potentially competing interests relating to submarine transit pipelines.