This article examines the problem of divergent judicial interpretation of harmonized documents. Drawing on the experience of harmonization of the law of arbitration, it points out that divergent interpretation runs much deeper than is commonly assumed, and shows strong similarities to the ‘transplant effect’ discussed in the literature on legal transplants. The article examines why the transplant effect shows up in harmonization, and considers its importance for the eventual success or failure of harmonization projects.

In light of a recent shift in dialogue to hard law standards in the domain of business and human rights, this article provides an in-depth examination of the viability of a business and human rights treaty. It seeks to advance a valid theoretical model for a treaty that directly addresses non-State actors, explores the allocation of responsibility among multiple duty-bearers, and contemplates the scope, content, and enforcement of the potential obligations. By supplementing this analysis with analogies drawn from existing treaty regimes, the article aims to contribute positively to the normative development of international law in the field.

Three common law countries—the UK, Canada and Australia—have significantly expanded citizenship revocation laws as a counterterrorism response. This article provides a detailed examination of these laws, their development and their use. It also explores and critiques the extent to which the laws shift citizenship away from fundamental common law principles, and the means by which such a shift has been justified.

A growing opinion has appeared in refugee and human rights discourse that the 1950 European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (the European Convention) provides more extensive protection against refoulement than the 1951 UN Convention relating to the Status of Refugees (the Refugee Convention). However, uncertainties remain as to whether the protection offered by the 1984 UN Convention against Torture (the Torture Convention) and the 1966 UN International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (the Political Covenant) may substitute, or, rather, reinforce, that of the European Convention. Which of these four instruments offers the greatest protection against a decision of refoulement from a European country? The answer to this question is far from being academic. The rule that an international organ may only be competent to consider an individual petition or communication provided “the same matter is not being examined under another procedure of individual investigation or settlement” is embodied in all three instruments providing a procedure for individual complaints. It is therefore crucial for an asylum-seeker to give his or her best shot first, even if, as rightly pointed out by Liz Heffernan, the Strasbourg organs and the Geneva organs are not in competition.1 This article will review the scope of protection afforded under the three of these treaties which provide an international enforcement mechanism to persons who have sought refugee status in the domestic jurisdiction.

This article compares and contrasts Chapter 11 of the US Bankruptcy Code with the UK administration procedure under the Insolvency and Enterprise Acts. It focuses in particular on who runs a company during the restructuring process—debtor-in-possession or management displacement in favour of an outside administrator. Various reasons have been given to explain the US/UK divergence in this respect including differences in entrepreneurial culture and differences in the lending markets in the two countries. The article suggests that the divergence cannot be reduced to a single factor but instead implicates a complex web of circumstances.

This article provides a holistic examination of the international legal frameworks which regulate targeted killings by drones. The article argues that for a particular drone strike to be lawful, it must satisfy the legal requirements under all applicable international legal regimes, namely: the law regulating the use of force (ius ad bellum); international humanitarian law and international human rights law. It is argued that the legality of a drone strike under the ius ad bellum does not preclude the wrongfulness of that strike under international humanitarian law or international human rights law, and that since those latter obligations are owed to individuals, one State cannot consent to their violation by another State. The article considers the important legal challenges that the use of armed drones poses under each of the three legal frameworks mentioned above. It considers the law relating to the use of force by States against non-State groups abroad. This part examines the principles of self-defence and consent, in so far as they may be relied upon to justify targeted killings abroad. The article then turns to some of the key controversies in the application of international humanitarian law to drone strikes. It examines the threshold for non-international armed conflicts, the possibility of a global non-international armed conflict and the question of who may be targeted in a non-international armed conflict. The final substantive section of the article considers the nature and application of the right to life in armed conflict, as well as the extraterritorial application of that right particularly in territory not controlled by the State conducting the strike.

There have been several cases reported over the last few years on the meaning of “habitual residence”. This comparatively new phrase is much in use not only in domestic legislation but also in various Hague Conventions on the reform of private international law and it is in widespread use by the European Commission. Habitual residence is the basis for allocating jurisdiction to that State's court, especially in relation to matrimonial causes and child custody. For example, it has been proposed by the European Commission as a replacement for domicile in the new Convention on the Jurisdiction and Enforcement of Judgments in Civil Matters. Habitual residence is also extremely important in connection with tax matters and social security. It is additionally used in the Immigration Act 1971. Other than its purpose in allocating jurisdiction, habitual residence is beginning to be adopted as a connecting factor for choice of law, for instance the Rome Convention on Choice of Law in Contract.

Non-execution of the judgments of the European Court of Human Rights is a matter of serious concern. In order to address it, the reasons for and dynamics of non-execution need to be fully considered. This paper engages with non-execution by sketching the underpinning issues that help to explain it and, we argue, must shape our responses to it. Through this engagement, we conclude that non-execution is properly understood as a phenomenon that requires political rather than legal responses. This calls into question the usefulness of the infringement proceedings contained in Article 46(4) of the Convention and which it has recently been suggested ought to be embraced in attempts to address non-execution. We argue that, even if the practical difficulties of triggering Article 46(4) proceedings could somehow be overcome, the dynamics of non-execution suggest that such proceedings would be both futile and counterproductive, likely to lead to backlash against the Court and unlikely to improve States’ execution of its judgments.

Far from being confined to its most obvious manifestations, such as in the right to be tried within a “reasonable time” guaranteed by Articles 5 and 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights, references to the notion of “reasonable” are found in a large variety of primary rules pronounced in both legal instruments and the case law.1

This article is an expanded and footnoted version of the lectur given at the British Institute of International and Comparative Law on Tuesday 21 March 2006, entitled ‘International Law in the European Court of Human Rights’.

The article begins with some comparative comments on the application of the European Convention on Human Rights in monistic and dualistic systems It then discusses in detail the European Court's case law which confirms that the Convention, despite its special character as a human rights treaty, is indeed part of public international law. It concludes that the Convention and international law find themselves in a kind of interactive mutual relationship. checking and buildine on each other.

The hegemonic position of the United States, and its implication for international law, are rapidly emerging as sites of intense scholarly interest.1 It is a truism that the fall of the Berlin wall has been followed by a period of unprecedented American predominance in the military, economic, and political spheres. Replacing the bi-polar certainties of the Cold War is a world in flux, dominated, to a significant extent, by one remaining superpower, or, in the words of the former French Foreign Minister, Hubert Vedrine, by a ‘hyperpower’. 2 Some though, have emphasised the continuing importance of other loci of (lesser) power in a ‘uni-multipolar’ world.3 That this domination posed critical questions for international law was obvious well before the 9/11 atrocities, as the debate over NATO's use of force in Kosovo illustrated. Since the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and with the global ‘war on terror’ reaching into ever-increasing spheres, the debate has intensified significantly.

I feel privileged to have been invited to deliver this yearřs FA Mann lecture in succession to a long line of distinguished lawyers who have paid their own tribute to one of the most outstanding German legal émigrés of the 1930s. Francis Mann became a legend in his lifetime for his profound scholarship and his expertise in international and commercial litigation. While still in Germany he had fallen under the spell of the legendary Martin Wolff, the great conflicts lawyer, with whom he was able to resume contact years later in England. Mann himself was to become a leading light in both private and public international law. He had strong views on everything, a few of them decidedly unorthodox. His work The Legal Aspect of Money became a classic, and he died in bed while correcting the proofs of the fifth edition. Happily, Charles Proctor has taken over the mantle of editing the sixth edition, which has now been published by Oxford University Press. Full details of the contributions to English law by Wolff, Mann and other outstanding German émigré lawyers will be found in a collection of essays in a fine new publication, Jurists Uprooted, edited by Sir Jack Beatson and Professor Reinhard Zimmerman.

Can a few primarily Western States expand the right to self-defence against non-State actors, incorporating the unwilling or unable standard? Even on a traditional reading of customary law formation, the answer is no because proponents have failed to attract consistent and widespread support. What is more, using our interactional international law approach, we show that efforts to date have not been successful because they have failed to address fundamental rule of law concerns. The current state of world politics has perhaps caught proponents of the unwilling or unable standard in a difficult bind. We suggest how proponents might carefully develop the law on self-defence against non-State actors.

A lecturer on the Alabama claims and the Geneva Tribunal of 1871–2, like a director of Hamlet, has to accept one inescapable fact: that everyone knows, broadly at least, how the story ends. There can be no reliance on suspense to sustain interest in the narrative. So I shall begin at the end.

It is generally considered that an international organization (‘IO’) has an international legal personality which is distinct from that of its Member States, as a result of which the IO itself, rather than the Member States, is to be held responsible for the IO's internationally wrongful acts.1 It appears to be an accepted principle that Member States cannot generally be held liable for the acts of IOs by virtue of their membership of an IO alone. This view can be found in a 1996 resolution of the Institut de Droit International, which provides that ‘there is no general rule of international law whereby States members are, due solely to their membership, liable, concurrently or subsidiarily, for the obligations of an international organization of which they are members.’2 This is echoed in the International Law Commission's (‘ILC’) Commentary to article 62 of the Draft Articles on the Responsibility of International Organizations (‘ILC DARIO’): ‘It is clear that … membership does not as such entail for member States international responsibility when the organization commits an internationally wrongful act’.3 The ILC holds the view that only in the case of an intervening act by a Member State that influences the commission of a wrongful act by the IO (aid and assistance, direction and control, coercion, avoidance of compliance, acceptance) could the Member State be held responsible.4

The General Assembly first proposed that the International Law Commission look into the issue of state immunity in 1977. As State immunity, by its very nature, sits at the interface between traditional and contemporary notions of international law, the span of the negotiations over three decades inevitably exposed the resulting Convention to gaps and inconsistencies with evolving areas of international law. In 1999 the International Law Commission established a Working Group on Jurisdictional immunities of States and their property,