The law applicable to arbitration is not the law applicable in arbitration. The latter determines arbitrators' decisions. The former refers to the source of their authority: the legal order that governs arbitration. According to the territorialist thesis, an arbitration can have no foundation other than that of the legal order of the particular State in which the arbitration takes place. This outdated conception is disproved by the simple factual observation that a plurality of legal orders may give effect to arbitration. Some French scholars promote the notion of an autonomous arbitral order. Inasmuch as they ultimately seek to establish this order by positing its recognition by the very State orders from which they claim autonomy, their idea is circular and in effect no more than a dressed-up variant of ordinary horizontal pluralism. But the model of horizontal pluralism fails to account for important orderings of arbitral activity. Arbitration in modern society is accurately perceived as a complex, three-dimensional form of pluralism, in which legal orders (i) are not exclusively those of States and (ii) frequently overlap.

The aim of this article is to look at the phenomenon of Europeanization of judiciaries of third countries through the prism of EU external policy. It is argued that external factors (objectives of EU external policies, EU soft law, EU technical and financial assistance, favourable interpretation of EU law by the ECJ towards third country nationals) play important role in persuading third country judiciaries to apply the EU acquis in their judgments. The similar pattern can be envisaged with regard to Russia and Ukraine. Case study shows that EU policies towards these countries led to generally favourable attitude towards applying the EU acquis by Russian and Ukrainian courts, though mainly as a persuasive source of law. However, problems linked to effectiveness, independence and fight with corruption hinder further Europeanization of judiciaries in Russia and Ukraine.

This article considers the functions of transparency in regulating consumer contract terms in the UK and Australia. The discussion is set in the context of EU level regulation with various references to civil law approaches. The main issue explored here is the extent to which transparency is capable of legitimizing substantively unfair terms. However, I also explore other roles that may be played by transparency and the extent to which these are facilitated in the UK and Australia.

International fisheries law is no longer driven by the clash of interests between coastal and distant-water fishing States, but is increasingly about how States in existing international fisheries, mostly with some degree of responsibility for their depletion, are striving to exclude newcomers. The residual freedom of fishing on the high seas is an obstacle to regulation by international commissions since States outside are not bound by treaties to which they are not party—which in turn creates a disincentive for States inside to accept the necessary restraints. Rules to limit entry to international fisheries are therefore now needed, and articles 8 and 17 of the UN Fish Stocks Agreement come close to this, but their transformation into custom (or that of regulations adopted by fisheries commissions into objective regimes) so as to bind non-parties is being stunted by commissions' self-serving views on what cooperation with them by new entrants to the fisheries entails for the latter. The result is that the modern arguments for exclusion of newcomers bear an uncomfortable resemblance to the discredited 1950s abstention doctrine. This article suggests why those arguments are now meeting little resistance, despite being advanced by States collectively unwilling even to restore depleted stocks to the biomass corresponding to their maximum sustainable yield, as the doctrine would have required (and the current law also does).

This article considers whether the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement for the Sudan (the CPA) gives rise to binding obligations for the parties under international law. The legitimacy and effectiveness of the CPA, and the avoidance of a return to bloody civil war, depends significantly on the Agreement giving rise to legal obligations. While it has been held in arbitration that the CPA is not a treaty, this article suggests that it is a binding international agreement and further that there are obligations concerning the outstanding referendum for the people of the Abyei region. The legal issues of the CPA are more complex than they at first appear and they engage deeper and broader questions of the role of international law. The article will suggest among other things that the Sudan situation demonstrates it is difficult to draw immutable general rules in abstraction about the international law relating to peace agreements and to self-determination.

Recent years have witnessed significant developments in international human rights law relating to domestic violence. No longer viewed as a matter ‘essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of the State’, domestic violence now frequently commands the attention of international human rights bodies. The obligations imposed on States include positive obligations of due diligence to prevent, investigate and to punish domestic violence, whenever and wherever it occurs.1 Judicial dialogue across the borders of human rights and refugee law has also expanded access to asylum for women fleeing domestic violence, bringing with it a gradual recognition of the positive obligations that international law now imposes on States. However, as recent cases such as Jessica Gonzalez v the United States2 and Opuz v Turkey3 reveal, significant gaps remain between the rhetoric of human rights law and the reality of everyday enforcement and implementation on the ground. These gaps are most keenly felt by refugee women. While State practice suggests greater gender inclusivity and sensitivity in the practice of refugee law, women fleeing domestic violence continue to face obstacles in making their claims heard.

International commercial arbitration has long been a popular method for resolving cross-border business disputes. The opportunity for parties to choose their adjudicators and the dispute resolution procedure, the scope for privacy and the greater capacity for enforcement of awards compared to court judgments are all important reasons that parties prefer international arbitration over litigation. Reinforcing this trend in favour of international commercial arbitration has been a general consensus among national courts and legislatures that support, rather than interference, should be provided to the arbitral process. Such a philosophy is apparent, for example, in the requirements in the widely adopted New York Convention for States to recognize and enforce both foreign arbitration agreements and awards, and in international instruments such as the 1985 UNCITRAL Model Law on International Commercial Arbitration, which authorize national courts to assist, rather than intervene, in the conduct of arbitrations within their borders. Moreover, international commercial arbitration has proven to be sufficiently flexible as a dispute resolution method to be used both in disputes between private parties, and between private and State entities.

The Cancun Agreements, hailed by Patricia Espinosa, Mexican Secretary of Foreign Affairs and President of the Cancun Conference, as launching ‘a new era of international cooperation on climate change,’1 were concluded on 11 December 2010 to widespread acclaim. These agreements that will guide the climate negotiations for the foreseeable future represent another twist in the tale of the ongoing negotiations.

Since the outset of the financial crisis, the EU financial markets regime1 has been undergoing a period of turbulence which contrasts sharply with the period of relative stability which it briefly enjoyed over 2005–2007 and post-FSAP (Financial Services Action Plan2). The FSAP reforms had been adopted. The Committee of European Securities Regulators (CESR) had emerged as an influential actor, driving some degree of supervisory coordination and co-operation and constructing a significant soft law ‘rule-book.’ And the 2007 Lamfalussy Review suggested broad political, institutional and stakeholder satisfaction with the Lamfalussy process. There was little enthusiasm for grand adventures in institutional design, albeit that supervision, an institutionally-driven concern, was presciently if belatedly emerging as a concern of the EU institutions. The Review's main concern, however, was with strengthening the pragmatic, if somewhat haphazard, network-based, ‘supervisory convergence’ model as the means for supervising the integrating EU financial market. With respect to regulation, reflecting the wider international zeitgeist pre-crisis,3 ‘Better Regulation’ and the need for a ‘regulatory pause’ were the watchwords of a Commission which, once the massive FSAP regime was safely in place, espoused the benefits of self-regulation and highlighted the risks of intervention without impact assessment, extensive consultation and evidence of market failure.4 This was most apparent with respect to credit rating agencies,5 debt market transparency,6 hedge funds,7 and clearing and settlement.8 Institutionally, a relatively sophisticated law-making apparatus, in the form of the Lamfalussy structures, a plethora of advisory bodies and stakeholder bodies (notably FIN-NET which represents the consumer and SME interest), had been established.

The judgment of 3 December 2009 in Commission v Germany touches upon the issue of improper implementation by a Member State (Germany) of the EU regulatory framework in the electronic communications sector.1 In this sense, the judgment in question belongs to the relatively large group of rulings in which the European Court of Justice (ECJ) categorizes the legislative actions (or inactions) of Member States in the field of electronic communications as infringing the Union secondary legislation.2 Undoubtedly, however, Commission v Germany constitutes a judgment that is of paramount importance within the above-mentioned group of rulings and deserves a particularly close attention. Being confronted here with the German rules that generally exempted the so-called new (emerging) markets in the sector concerned from ex ante regulation, the Court had an opportunity to express its views on such key regulatory issues as:

1. 1) the position of encouraging efficient investment in infrastructure, and promoting innovation within the hierarchy of objectives that the EU regulation in electronic communications sector aims to achieve;

2. 2) the scope of discretionary powers of national regulatory authorities (NRAs) in defining the markets susceptible to ex ante regulation, and in regulating those markets, including the markets having a new or emerging character;

3. 3) the role of national legislators in regulating electronic communications markets, and particularly the relationships between national legislators and NRAs in the field of regulation of the markets in question.

On 14 September 2010 the Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ) delivered its judgment in Akzo Nobel.1 The judgment and its preceding opinion focused on the application of legal professional privilege to communications between a client and in-house legal counsel. The less-emphasized aspect of the case was the Court's decision to exclude all lawyers qualified outside of the European Union (EU) from the application of legal professional privilege.2 Because the application of legal professional privilege to lawyers from third States was not the focus of Akzo Nobel, the issue was lost in the extensive debate surrounding privilege and in-house legal counsel. The Court unfortunately missed an opportunity to reshape EU privilege law in acknowledgement of its negative consequences on the EU human rights framework and also on the EU's relationships with countries which do not apply a similar bright line rule. These implications will be discussed below with a particular emphasis on the EU's obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and its relationship with the United States (US).

In the Cases C-585/08 Peter Pammer v Reedere Karl Schluter GmbH & Co and C-144/09 Hotel Alpenhof GesmbH v Oliver Heller, the CJEU considered the applicability of article 15(1) (c) of Regulation EC 44/2001 (Brussels I) vis-à-vis the use of web sites in commercial communications with consumers domiciled in other Member States. Article 15 of Brussels I contains special rules which determine the jurisdiction of disputes concerning ‘protected’1 consumer contracts falling within its scope. Articles 15(1)(a) and (b) apply where either the contract is subject to an instalment credit arrangement or where the contract is for a loan to finance the sale of goods respectively. These two recent cases were concerned with article 15(1)(c), itself previously regarded by the Commission as the ‘philosophy of Article 15.’2 The connecting factors in article 15(1)(c) apply in two situations.3 The first is where the seller concludes contracts as a result of commercial activities entered into in the Member State of the consumer's domicile. The alternative applies when a business ‘directs’ its professional or commercial activities to the Member State of the consumer's domicile and a contract is concluded as a consequence of those activities. Article 15(2) also (currently) provides that a non-EU defendant corporation which has a branch or agency in a Member State that contracts with a consumer may be regarded as domiciled in that Member State. The cases are important as for the first time references were made to the CJEU to specifically consider and interpret the extent to which a business' web site should be construed as ‘directing [commercial] activities’ towards consumers domiciled in other Member States. Essentially, what kind of activity should be construed as directing activity when a seller or his agent uses a web site with the intention to facilitate contractual activities with consumers located in a Member State?