Historically and conceptually, EU law originates in the idea that member States have approved restrictions of national sovereignty in the interests of establishing a common market. In accordance with this idea, significant elaboration or extension of these restrictions must also be approved by the member States or at least by a majority of their representatives in the Council of the Union. The implication is not only that the development of the rules of the common market is dependent on the will of the member States. The further implication is that the rules of the common market and the rules of Union decision-making are separable, in the sense that the latter rules are not affected by the former rules. While such implications are ill-adapted to the pluralist tendencies of integration processes, particularly the participation of third States (that is, non-member States) in these processes, they are confirmed by the formal structure of the EC Treaty.

For most international travellers by air the Warsaw Convention, if it impinges on their consciousness at all, probably only raises a faint association with limitation of liability and with warning notices in various sizes of print on a passenger's ticket or ticket envelope. Only the most serious dearth of alternative reading, lack of airport facilities or unusual curiosity would be likely to induce an air traveller to read all the conditions and notices on the ticket.

The Hong Kong Bill of Rights Ordinance entered into force on 8 June 1991. Its purpose is to incorporate into the law of Hong Kong the provisions of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (“the ICCPR”) as applied to Hong Kong. Being one of the first occasions where the ICCPR has been given direct legal force in a common law jurisdiction, the Hong Kong experience will provide an interesting case study on how an international human rights instrument is received and interpreted in domestic law. Indeed, shortly after the coming into operation of the Hong Kong Bill of Rights Ordinance, the late Professor Opsahl predicted that it would give the ICCPR, and by implication the Human Rights Committee, a potential impact on the Hong Kong domestic legal system which could hardly be expected in other countries. He even suggested that, in dealing with matters which the Human Rights Committee has not yet considered, the interpretation of the Hong Kong courts in applying the Bill of Rights may provide a useful supplement to international human rights law. The Bill of Rights Ordinance is now seven years old. This article will address two issues: first, the impact international and comparative jurisprudence has had on the interpretation of the Hong Kong Bill of Rights and, second, the contribution the Hong Kong jurisprudence on the Bill of Rights has or could have made to the development of international and comparative human rights law.

That humanitarian rules were applicable in armed conflicts was accepted long before the nineteenth century, but the fact that non-international armed conflicts were regarded as beyond the ambit of international regulation meant that the application of such norms to internal armed conflicts was certainly not a matter of course. Towards the end of the eighteenth century there had been a move towards the application of the laws of warfare to non-international armed conflicts as well as international conflicts, but this was based on the character of the conflicts and the fact that both were often of a similar magnitude, rather than any humanitarian concern to treat the victims of both equally. Not until the nineteenth century did the application of the laws of war to non-international armed conflicts become a widespread issue in international law.

[It] is not lawful for a doctor to administer a drug to his patient to bring about his death, even though that course is prompted by a humanitarian desire to end his suffering, however great that suffering may be … So to act is to cross the Rubicon which runs between on the one hand the care of the living patient and on the other hand euthanasia—actively causing his death to avoid suffering.

The twelfth edition of Dicey & Morris, The Conflict of Laws (hereafter Dicey & Morris) appeared in 1993 under the general editorship of Dr Lawrence Collins and with Professors Trevor C. Hartley, J. D. McClean and C. G. J. Morse as specialist editors. It has since been updated by a yearly cumulative supplement; the latest is from 1997. The book takes in the whole province of private international law and is rich in material and ideas. It shows how English lawyers have reacted to the outside world without forgetting that the conflict of laws has an international character. Its students consider it to be a noble science. As Arthur Nussbaum said, the student of private international law “feels himself, as it were, a member of an international community of learning. He will have to study foreign legal ideas and will thereby obtain insight into the variety and interplay of heterogeneous legal concepts and ideas all over the world.”

The importance of the safe and environmentally sound management of radioactive wastes had been strongly reaffirmed by the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. This question was dealt with in Chapter 22 on “safe and environmentally sound management of radioactive wastes” of Agenda 21, adopted at the time of the Conference, which specifically referred to the necessity for States to “support efforts within IAEA to develop and promulgate radioactive wastes safety standards or guidelines and codes of practice as an internationally accepted basis for the safe and environmentally sound management and disposal of radioactive waste”. This political statement was probably the first step in the process which has led to the adoption, in September 1997, of the Joint Convention on the Safety of Spent Fuel Management and on the Safety of Radioactive Waste Management (hereafter the “Joint Convention”). In 1994 the importance of elaborating safety standards for radioactive waste management appears again in the Convention on Nuclear Safety of 20 September 1994, the Preamble to which (paragraph ix) reads: “Affirming the need to begin promptly the development of an international convention on the safety of radioactive waste management as soon as the ongoing process to develop waste management safety fundamentals has resulted in broad international agreement.”

On the premise that democratic government is founded, inter alia, on the accountability of public bodies and their officials, as well as on the popular participation in collective decision-making by the governed at all levels of government, there is merit in the proposition that it is improper to curb open debate, especially in matters which are of public interest. In so far as the work of the judiciary in general, and of judges in particular, is in the public domain and thus of public interest, the value of the freedom of expression applies, in principle, with equal force. Freedom of expression in the legal domain and in relation to the work of judges serves a variety of useful purposes in democratic society. Freedom of expression serves to uphold the integrity of the principles of democracy which require that governmental institutions should be transparent and accountable, and in that sense the judicial domain, very much like other branches of government, benefits from a healthy exchange and interaction of opinions. The administration of justice is better served by well-informed participants than by ignorance, and freedom of expression can contribute to a full and rigorous assessment of information in the judicial context Similarly, in modern democratic society, all individuals, but especially legal journalists, lawyers and other officials of the legal establishment, contribute to the architecture of judicial policy through the expression of their opinions. Freedom of expression in this context can also prove to be an instrument of individual and professional self-fulfilment. This is considered crucial in any society which is dependent upon the participation of the people.

Formerly, EC activity in the area of private law used to be content with approximating member States' substantive laws in specified areas, and, therefore, eventual conflictual implications demanded considerable interpretative efforts. Modern Community legislation, however, increasingly complements the intended substantive-law harmonisation with provisions on conflict of laws. Given the existence of the (Rome) Convention on the Law Applicable to Contractual Obligations, implemented in the United Kingdom by the Contracts (Applicable Law) Act 1990, this new tendency, where it concerns areas falling within the Convention, raises complex questions on both legislative technique and policy. The Convention, in Article 20, expressly reserves the precedence of Community choice of law rules. However, merely to point to this priority rule appears to be too simple a solution as conflicts, before being solved, have to be defined, and that is what this article aims at. Further, as an analysis that deals with European law would be incomplete without taking into account the impact on member States' law, reference will be made to domestic English and, for the purposes of comparison, to domestic German law. The latter appears to qualify for such a comparative approach because, due to the Rome Convention already having been part of the domestic law for a considerable period, certain experience might be expected within that legal system in dealing with contract conflicts issues thereunder.

The Third Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (Climate Change Convention) was held from 1 to 11 December 1997 at Kyoto, Japan. Significantly the States Parties to the Convention adopted a protocol (Kyoto Protocol) on 11 December 1997 under which industrialised countries have agreed to reduce their collective emissions of six greenhouse gases by at least 5 per cent by 2008–2012. Ambassador Raul Estrada-Oyuela, who had chaired the Committee of the Whole established by the Conference to facilitate the negotiation of a Protocol text, expressed the view that: “This agreement will have a real impact on the problem of greenhouse gas emissions. Today should be remembered as the Day of the Atmosphere.” This note seeks to outline in brief the science of climate change, and international activity to combat global warming prior to the Kyoto conference. It then attempts to analyse the terms of the Kyoto Protocol and to draw some conclusions on its significance.

On 29 November 1996 Trial Chamber I of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (“the ICTY”) handed down its sentence in the case of Dražen Erdemović. This was a decision of historie significance for a variety of reasons, the most obvious being that it was the first sentence passed by an international war crimes tribunals, applying international law, since the International Military Tribunals which sat at Nuremberg and Tokyo between 1945 and 1948; it was also the first time a truly international tribunal bas concluded the trial of a minor war criminal, as opposed to a senior military commander or political leader. In addition, it was the first sentence handed down by the ICTY, which has been plagued sincc its first days of operation by problems in securing evidence and witnesses, not to mention the presence of the accused. Now the ICTY has shown, in the face of widespread criticism and accusations of impotence, that it can actually perform the task assigned to it. The doubt about such a judgment is that the Erdemović case is not perhaps the best basis on which to assess the ICTY's performance, so singular were the accused's conduct and, indeed, the circumstances in which he found himself before the Tribunal. Essentially, had it not been for the accused's voluntary surrender and his extensive co-operation with the Office of the Prosecutor, and the co-operation of the judirial authorities in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro) in transferring Erdemović to The Hague, the case would probably never have happened at all.