Civil liability for environmental damage is currently very much the centre of attention. Many countries and international organizations have recently adopted rules in this field or are in the process of doing so. Almost without exception, these rules concentrate on creating a liability regime for damage caused by pollution that is the result of incidents which took place before their entry into force. The problem of damage that is the result of so-called historic pollution — primarily cases of soil contamination — was mostly left outside the range of these regulations. Until recently that is. Last year specific legislation on liability in cases of historic soil contamination was adopted in the Flemish region of Belgium and in the United Kingdom. Other countries like, for example, Denmark are studying the subject. The Netherlands has much greater experience with this type of legislation. It goes back to the Interim Soil Clean-up Act of 1983. The experiences with this act are reflected in a new legal regime for cleaning up contaminated land that came into force in 1994. The objective of this article is to reflect on these Dutch experiences.

In the period from the 1950s up to today, an accelerated development has taken place in favour of legal remedies by means of proceedings for individuals against the State. That development has had a positive influence on legal remedies in immigration proceedings. Certainly since the 1980s, however, an opposite current can also be noticed. While the legal remedies by means of proceedings for individuals against the administration have in general become stronger, an increasing tendency is appearing to make exceptions to this prejudicial to immigration proceedings. In the decade 1985–1995, the national immigration legislation in many West European states has been drastically altered. For the Union Member States to the south of France, this development only began after 1990, for a number of Member States to the North, it was already in progress. The conditions for admission and residence were tightened, and the possibilities for removal from the territory were expanded. For applicants for asylum this applied to an even greater extent.

Dutch health care occasionally comes under close international scrutiny. The interest usually centres on euthanasia and assisted suicide in the Netherlands. A development of perhaps more lasting importance, however, has so far virtually escaped attention elsewhere. It is the incorporation of a bill on patients' rights into the Dutch Civil Code. This article focuses on the new Dutch Act on Medical Services, which came into force on April 1, 1995. As a point of reference, English medical law will be referred to.

Punitive damages are a heavily debated aspect of the US legal system. Courts and commentators from both within and outside the United States have leveled criticism at their foundation and application in current law. It is important to note, however, that punitive damages both originated in and exist in other legal systems. Much of the current debate in the US about punitive damages is fueled by ideological posturing in a national political debate more polarized than at any time in recent memory. It is not surprising that in the midst of such a domestic debate the view of punitive damages from abroad is less than flattering.

With the emergence of transnational business dealings as the norm rather than the exception, international co-operation in the enforcement of competition law has become more important than international co-operation to avoid conflict between individual nations' competition laws. The United States and Canada's most recent attempt to address conflict issues in competition law arising in transnational business dealings was in the negotiation of the 1984 Memorandum of Understanding (hereinafter the ‘MOU’). The MOU is an example of the first stage of international co-operation in competition law as it sets up a framework for the avoidance of conflict in the administration of two countries’ competition laws. However, co-operation to avoid conflicts does not help overcome the jurisdictional difficulties of co-operating countries trying to enforce domestic laws that seek to prosecute foreign conduct with domestic effect, such as those that exist in the US, the European Community and Canada. Six years after the MOU was signed, the Treaty between Canada and the US on Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters (hereinafter the ‘MLAT’) came into force and signalled a new era of competition law enforcement policy. The MLAT emphasized cooperation between Canada and the US competition enforcement authorities to enhance enforcement, rather than sjmply co-operation to avoid conflict. The expansion of the principle of enforcement enhancement in criminal competition law between the US and Canada to civil competition law was realized by the North American Free Trade Agreement (‘NAFTA’) and more concretely by the recent negotiation of a new agreement between Canada and the US6 (the ‘Canada-US Agreement’). The shift from passive co-operation to avoid conflict in the administration of competition laws to active co-operation to enhance enforcement is significant. The potential result is the correspondent shift in the relationship between a competition enforcement agency and the local business community from a close and open relationship to a more adversarial and closed relationship. A close relationship between a competition enforcement agency and the local business community is necessary as the business community is the enforcement agency's greatest ally in competition law enforcement.

For the first time in more than thirty years, no doubt due to a fresh wave of genocidal warfare in Europe, the likelihood of the establishment of a permanent International Criminal Court has re-emerged. One of the crimes with which the proposed jurisdiction of the Court is to be conferred is the international crime of aggression.

In order to stimulate the common market and the cooperation between businesses therein the European Union has always tried to remove the differences between the national corporate laws of the Member States. In 1968 the first directive on corporate law entered into force and since then a number of directives have been drafted and some of them have entered into force. One of the initiatives in this field is the 1985 proposal for a tenth directive concerning the cross-border merger of public limited liability companies.

Federalism is a form of governmental organisation whose origins may be traced to antiquity. However, the establishment of the United States as a federation during the late 18th century led to renewed interest in federal government, which has continued undiminished to the present day. As a measure of the significance of federalism, in 1987 it was estimated that some 40 per cent of the world's population lived in States that are formally federal, and that another one-third lived in polities that apply federal arrangements in some way. Amongst these States are Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Germany, India,Mexico, the Russian Federation, Switzerland and the United States of America.

The idea that voluntariness is at the heart of all self-assumed obligations is perhaps the undeniable hallmark of every developed legal system. Hence, virtually all legal systems place great emphasis on the need to establish the voluntariness of consent in contracts, being as they are, a species of voluntarily assumed obligations. Indeed, in virtually all developed legal systems specific rules have been evolved and formulated to give effect to the notion of free consent. However, even if the need and desire for consent to be voluntary and unencumbered by any vitiating factor is generally universal, what constitutes a factor having the effect of vitiating the freeness of a consent is undoubtedly less universal and more inclined to be a function of both culture and religion. This article will attempt to discuss and compare the varied notions of free consent in the different legal systems of some selected ASEAN countries from the perspective of the impact of coercion on consent. It will eventually become apparent that the deep-seated legal tradition that most of these ASEAN countries inherited from their colonial past is now undergoing a gradual transformation, in particular actuated and greatly animated by the need to re-examine and re-evaluate existing rules to make them relevant to popular and indigenous norms and value systems.

The concept of sovereignty is not on friendly terms with the concept of tolerance. Sovereignty is an exclusive concept, it is derived from the term ‘supreme power’ and it stands for absolute and comprehensive jurisdiction over the people who find themselves on the territory of the sovereign State. Sovereignty is indeed a State-oriented concept. State sovereignty is the hall-mark of the Westphalian system, a world-order composed of clearly defined, mutually impregnable territorial units. Tolerance is a concept which is man-oriented, it is inclusive, it denotes a state of mind, a mentality, it does not separate, it unites people in spite of their differences.