It has been believed for many years, indeed centuries, that the Channel between Great Britain and Continental Europe could be crossed only by boat. This belief has come to an end, albeit—at least for the time being—at a price which does not allow huge financial investments to be turned into a profit. The belief that in the legal field differences between English or Anglo-American common law and French and German—or, rather, Romanistic and Germanistic—legal systems are unbridgeable (or should I say “un-chunnelable”?) is even more widespread. That is the subject of this article: to show that differences between legal systems may, as a result of the European Union, be less unbridgeable than before, at least in certain areas of the law.

For a long time it looked as though comparative law was a matter for academic research, difficult and, surely, very interesting; beautiful to know something about, but not immediately relevant to the daily life of the law. Practising lawyers would admit the importance of comparative law in theory, but they would add that they themselves were, of course, too much occupied with the latest cases on trade marks, or with recent developments in the law of negligence.1

Article 9 of the Treaty of Rome, as amended by the 1992 Treaty on European Union (the Maastricht Treaty), declares that the European Community “shall be based upon a customs union which shall cover all trade in goods and which shall involve the prohibition between Member States of customs duties on imports and exports and of all charges having equivalent effect”.1 The principle was thereby established of the free movement of goods within the European Community. The Treaty does not define “goods” for the purposes of the Articles (9 to 37) which make up the Title dealing with “Free Movement of Goods”, but the European Court of Justice has held that “goods” means “products which can be valued in money and which are capable, as such, of forming the subject of commercial transactions”. From this it is clear that works of art are included in the “goods” that are intended to circulate freely within the Community.

In June 1992 the UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) took place in Rio de Janeiro; 1993 was the year of the World Conference on Human Rights, 1994 the year of the Cairo International Conference on Population and Development, and in March 1995 it was the turn of the World Summit for Social Development in Copenhagen.

The English courts have often incurred the reproach of undue insularity in their attitude to foreign law.1 A common gripe is that they have failed to recognise that there is a world elsewhere, and that England is not “a legal island”.2 Savigny, we are told,3 was moved to lament over the fact that although in other branches of knowledge there was an internationalist outlook in England, in the field of jurisprudence alone it “remained divided from the rest of the world, as if by a Chinese wall”. Recently it has been suggested that “The foundation of this Chinese wall… lay … in an unquestioning belief in the superiority of the common law and its institutions, at least in England.”4 It would be unsafe to affirm that the charge of insularity has always been without foundation. The “Little England”5 attitude of mind, Roskill LJ reminds us,6 was “once proclaimed in the phrase ‘Athanasius contra mundum’”. And it should occasion no surprise that the examples commonly advanced to substantiate the charge are usually drawn from private international law.7

It is clear that there is no doctrine of anticipatory breach as such in French contract law.1 How then does it deal with the facts which in English law give rise to the application of this doctrine? In answering this question, it is helpful to bear in mind that the two situations which English law treats as anticipatory breach are where a party declares in words or demonstrates by conduct his unwillingness to perform and where a party has “disabled” himself from performance owing to his own “act or default”.2

In Scotland, like England, possession plays a part in landownership. In Scotland a non-owner may acquire a title to land by the operation of prescription;1 in England the title of an owner may be lost by limitation2 but an easement can be acquired by prescription,3 as can a servitude in Scotland.4 Because the acquisition of ownership in Scots law is by the operation of prescription, both a title and possession are necessary,5 whereas in England only possession is required. Although the theory behind and the purpose of adverse possession are different in each jurisdiction, as are the periods of possession, the result in many cases will be similar. The purpose of this article is to look at the similarities and the differences, and to consider recent cases on possession in each jurisdiction to show to what extent, if at all, one jurisdiction may learn from the other. The Prescription & Limitation (Scotland) Act 1973 codified the law and, although it shortened the period of prescription, cases decided under the previous law, notably those on the requisites of possession, are still relevant.

It is rather distressing, if not tragic, that the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, with a relatively large legal population and a somewhat litigious reputation, has earned itself the dubious distinction of having the most archaic, if not the most inequitable, succession laws in the English-speaking Caribbean, second only to the Bahamas.

A great deal has happened since the first Polish Commissioner for Citizens' Rights Protection discussed the role of her office in this journal in January 1990.1 At that time, the communist regime had given place to Eastern Europe's first non-communist government, led by Tadeusz Mazowiecki, after the elections of June 1989. Following the Polish United Workers' Party's defeat then, communism collapsed throughout Eastern Europe. Poland itself has since moved somewhat shakily towards a pluralist democratic regime, with a directly elected president and two chambers of Parliament in which multi-party systems now operate. However, despite some suggestions that the institutions created during the communist period should be swept away after communism fell, several of them have made the transition to the new liberal-democratic State. These institutions include three that were created by the Jaruszelski regime during the 1980s in order to try to win back its fading popular legitimacy: the Supreme Administrative Court (SAC), the Constitutional Tribunal (CT) and the Commissioner for Citizens' Rights Protection (CCRP), or Ombudsman. Since the fall of communism, the need for administrative adjudication has both changed and become greater, especially because there has not yet been any agreement on a new Polish constitution. The number of complaints sent to the CCRP's office rose from 22,764 in 1990 to 29,273 in 1993. This short article gives an account of the principal developments in the Commissioner's role since 1990. Professor Letowska was replaced in the office in 1991 by Professor Tadeusz Zielinski, from the University of Krakow, and the change in incumbent has produced significant changes in practice as well as continuity.

Dusko Tadić is a Bosnian Serb. He is the first defendant of whom the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia (the “Tribunal”) obtained custody, following his transfer to the Tribunal at its request from Germany. Tadić had been arrested there and investigations had begun into his involvement in offences in Yugoslavia. These enquiries were discontinued at the request of the Tribunal.1

Human rights violations committed against women have become an increasingly high priority on the international agenda.1 Rape, “honour killings.”, bride-burning, genital mutilation, forced sterilisation, forced abortion, domestic violence are all acts of violence regularly committed against women. What makes women the target of such acts is primarily if not exclusively their sex. Membership of the female sex is what creates the risk. Women have been afforded minimal redress in international fora and this has been particularly true within the context of refugee determination. Women and children make up the majority of the world's refugee population2 yet, because of their comparative lack of mobility, the refugee jurisprudence which has evolved has been based primarily on the experiences of men. However, women often fear persecution for reasons different from men, and when they do fear persecution for the same reason as men they often experience the persecution differently. There is evidence that contemporary refugee law is becoming gender sensitive. In March 1993 the Guidelines on Women Refugee Claimants Fearing Gender-Related Persecution were issued by the Chairperson of the Canadian Immigration and Refugee Board.3 The Guidelines were novel in that their promulgation made Canada the first country to recognise formally that cognisance should be given to claims by refugee applicants of alleged genderrelated persecution. This short article will identify the raison d'être of the Guidelines, articulate their principal characteristics and assess their impact both within Canada and beyond.

The enlargement of the European Union from 1 January 1995 by the accession of Austria, Finland and Sweden inevitably necessitated amendments to much Community legislation.1

By far the most significant recent developments in the field of agriculture stem from the Uruguay Round concluded in Marrakesh on 15 April 1994. Subject to ratification by all signatories, the Final Act and the WTO Agreement may be expected to complement the MacSharry reforms1 in leading to substantial changes in the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).2 Of special importance are the Agreement on Agriculture and the Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures.3 The same may be said of the International Dairy Arrangement4 and of the Arrangement regarding Bovine Meat negotiated bilaterally with Uruguay.5 All these agreements have been approved on behalf of the European Community with regard to matters falling within its competence.6