In the 36 years since Francis Mann published Foreign Affairs in English Courts, the engagement of the United Kingdom courts with issues of international law has greatly increased. This article addresses the reasons underlying this trend and identifies four key developments: first, the nature of international law has evolved to embrace individuals as subjects; second, the Human Rights Act 1998 has had a profound influence, often requiring domestic courts to rule on matters of international law in order to give effect to the European Convention on Human Rights; third, in recent decades there has been a growing willingness on the part of courts in the United Kingdom to address and investigate the conduct of foreign States and issues of public international law; and fourth, these developments have been accompanied by a shift in attitudes to the relationship between customary international law and the common law.

Article 16 of the Ireland–Northern Ireland Protocol annexed to the EU–UK Withdrawal Agreement is an escape clause which allows the parties to deviate from their obligations under certain conditions. This article maps out the main features of the safeguards provision in the Protocol in light of international trade law and international relations literature on treaty design. It provides a detailed examination of the safeguards provision in the Protocol and highlights the key design flaws associated with this regime as well as some potential solutions to such flaws.

This article explores how sovereignty fictions have been used to advance different legal, political and economic aims in the articulation of the United Kingdom's future approach to global regulation. By mapping the transformative shifts in sovereignty paradigms, this article highlights the disconnect between the absolutist sovereignty popularised in the UK government's political rhetoric and the concept of regulatory sovereignty that underpins the UK's future trading strategy. To maintain its status as a global leader in regulation and standards-setting, the UK government will need to diffuse power and delegate autonomy through networked orders of public and private actors. These competing sovereignty paradigms are analysed with reference to European Union (EU) law and practice, to highlight the opportunities and challenges for the UK as an independent trade actor. This article concludes by evaluating how sovereignty fictions can disrupt the objectives of the UK's proposed ‘common law’ approach to regulatory governance and discusses the policy interventions that may be required to enable the UK to harness its potential as a regulatory leader.

The concepts of jurisdiction and applicable law have been traditionally regarded as separate inquiries in private international law: a court only considers the applicable law once it has decided to adjudicate a matter. While such an approach still generally applies in civil law jurisdictions, in common law countries the concepts are increasingly intertwined. This article examines the relationship between jurisdiction and applicable law in two key areas: applications to stay proceedings on the ground of forum non conveniens and to enforce foreign exclusive jurisdiction agreements. While courts generally apply the principle that jurisdiction and applicable law should coincide where possible, there are circumstances where a court may retain jurisdiction despite a foreign governing law or may ‘trust’ a foreign tribunal to apply the law of the forum. This article seeks to establish a framework by which courts may assess the role of the applicable law in forum determinations.

In 2021, unconstitutional transfers of power in Myanmar and Afghanistan highlighted that while States may desire a coherent response to questions about the status of governments, and may look for international guidance in such regard, there is no established process for providing such guidance. Thus, attention focuses on the General Assembly's credentials process, designed to assess the eligibility of delegates to represent their States at the UN. This article proposes that rather than the credentials process being stretched in this way, greater use should be made of the Assembly's competence to pass determinative resolutions on government legitimacy.

Cyberspace is now acknowledged not only as the newest domain of warfare, but also as a space vital to economic, educational and cultural development for all States. This thin consensus ignores the fundamental fact that the backbone of cyber infrastructure—submarine telecommunication cables—is not (for the large part) located within sovereign territorial jurisdiction. The radically increased reliance of States upon submarine data cables emphasises their vulnerability to damage by malicious acts, accidents, or natural phenomena. Faced with these problems, legal analysis has tended to identify gaps or deficiencies in the law, and propose the creation of new legal instruments. The contribution of this article is twofold. First, it expands the frame of analysis to include deliberate damage to cables not only in peacetime but under the law of armed conflict. Second, rather than treating the legal framework as inherently deficient, it considers the extent to which existing rules and principles can be progressively developed, interpreted, or creatively applied to close perceived gaps. This article surveys the existing law specific to the protection of submarine cables and assesses how general principles of the law of the sea, State responsibility, the law on the use of force, and the law of armed conflict apply to this problem. It thus considers in turn the applicable ‘law of peace’, the jus ad bellum and the jus in bello.

This article makes a case for an international convention on expert determination (ED) and Dispute Boards (DBs) that would require its Contracting States to recognise agreements on ED/DBs and enforce ED/DB decisions. Whilst strong, the case for the convention may not be compelling as there are arguments against it. But at least the time has come for the international legal community to start thinking about and debating the need for such an international regime. This article takes the first step towards imagining this international regime by evaluating a number of key issues relating to its scope of application.

FS Cairo (Nile Plaza) LLC v Brownlie (Brownlie II) is arguably the United Kingdom's highest appellate court's most significant decision this century on a private international law question. The judgment has ended nearly two decades of debate about the meaning of ‘damage’ sustained in England for the purpose of paragraph 3.1(9)(a) of Practice Direction 6B of the Civil Procedure Rules. In a four-to-one majority ruling, the Supreme Court decided that the provision was to be interpreted widely, such that, in a personal injury claim, any significant harm of any kind suffered by a claimant in England could provide a basis for the service of proceedings on a foreign-based defendant. The article is critical of the majority's decision, as it is liable to create both immediate and long-term problems in the context of the service-out jurisdiction in England. It also examines the court's pronouncements on the other question before it concerning proof of foreign law.

Under the International Health Regulations (IHR), States must consider decision-making criteria in applying travel restrictions during a public health emergency of international concern. Interpretation on the legal parameters of such restrictions varies widely. This article considers whether and how the permissibility of travel restrictions under the IHR may have changed given recent developments, including evolving scientific evidence about their efficacy and shifting World Health Organization (WHO) advice. It is argued that such determinations must conform to the principles of necessity and proportionality as articulated by the IHR, and must also be accompanied by the correlative IHR duties of collaboration and assistance rooted substantively in global solidarity.