The general principle, best articulated in the leading case of British South Africa Company v. Companhia de Mocambique,1 is that a court in the Commonwealth will not entertain an action involving the title to foreign realty. However, there are two established exceptions. First, a court of equity will not refuse jurisdiction if the plaintiff's claim is based on contract, trust or fraud affecting the foreign land, and the court has jurisdiction in personam over the defendant.2In personam jurisdiction may be established if the defendant is present within the jurisdiction, submits to the court, or the court grants leave to serve notice of the writ out of the jurisdiction under Order 11, rule 1(1) (or its equivalent) of the Rules of the Supreme Court. Second, “in the exercise of the undoubted jurisdiction of the courts it may become necessary incidentally to investigate and determine the title to foreign lands”.3 Thus, if the court has jurisdiction to administer a trust or the estate of a deceased person, and the property includes property (whether movables or immovables) situated locally, and immovables situated abroad, the court will have jurisdiction to determine questions of title to the foreign immovables for the purposes of the administration.4 No contractual or fiduciary relationship need exist between the parties, and it seems unlikely that in personam jurisdiction is required.5

This article analyses the contribution made to the effective implementation of international environmental law in the EU by the ECJ invoking direct application and effect of international treaties. It considers the requirements of these doctrines in international law, distinguishing them from related doctrines in EU law. It reviews jurisprudence and literature and evaluates future potential. Implications for direct application and effect from the EU doctrine of primacy and for the principle of effective judicial protection are examined, and alternatives to full transposition, implementation and enforcement explored, including non-compliance procedures.

On 17 April 2002, Canada will mark the 20th anniversary of the adoption of its bill of rights—the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. At the time, it seemed a momentous event to many, a strange thing to do. True, Canada was a bi-jural country, thanks to Quebec and the Civil Code. Nevertheless, the rest of the country sat solidly in the common law tradition. Codes, or so we thought, were anathema to common law systems that prided themselves on protection of rights through the incremental growth of precedent.

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.

The State enterprise was the most conspicuous symbol of the socialist economy. In the late 1980s the gradual demise of the command system based on State ownership and the restructuring of economic relations were accompanied by the introduction of a variety of new forms of commercial organisation into the Soviet legal system.

In the three years since last surveyed in the Quarterly,1 EU environmental law has continued to justify its reputation as one of the most fast-moving fields of EU law, with a large number of highly significant legislative and jurisprudential developments. This review selects some of the most important areas of development in the field in recent years: in particular, the EU's new environmental action programme for 2013–20, EU climate and energy law, environmental governance and enforcement, and integration of environmental concerns into other EU policy areas.

A peculiar and unique agreement exists between Australia and Nauru, which has ensured that, since 1976, appeals may be brought from the Supreme Court of Nauru, an independent Republic, to the High Court of Australia by virtue of a bilateral treaty1 and statutes of the respective Parliaments.2 In 1998 and 1999 two High Court judgments left a question mark hanging over the constitutional validity of this appellate scheme.3 Furthermore, in 2001, the Australian Law Reform Commission (ALRC) expressed the view that Australia should terminate the agreement as the arrangement was of no perceived ‘utility’ to Australia.4 For 29 years only two rather trivial cases were appealed from the Supreme Court to Australia's High Court.5 In 2005 a much more significant case, Ruhani, 6 was appealed from Nauru to Australia. The case was not only significant in that it concerned the validity of the so-called ‘Pacific Solution’, which involved Australia holding asylum-seekers offshore in Nauru for the processing of their refugee claims, but it also raised doubts about the desirability of the offshore municipal model of foreign appeals. This article examines the latter of those issues, intending to demonstrate that the model of foreign appeal adopted in the Nauru Treaty is a compromised version of appeal in comparison with the other two more common models.

This article provides a thorough analysis of the employment contract in comparative European private law and Community law. It argues that a common concept of employment contract should prevail in European private law. In that respect, the autonomous and broad interpretation which has been given to the term ‘worker’ in Community law could be a basis for adoption of an autonomous concept of the employment contract in European private law.