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.

Whether through the framework of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) or outside of it, the former Soviet republics continue to seek and depend on economic cooperation with each other, particularly in the area of trade in goods. This article examines the legal framework for free trade in the post-Soviet space and discusses its role in fostering effective regional cooperation. The focus is on the multiplication of regimes at the bilateral and multilateral (CIS) level—a particular blend of ‘à; la carte multilateralism’ and multiple bilateralism—and their respective features in terms of legal nature, substantive scope, and disciplining mechanisms, as well as the implications of their overlap. We find that both the bilateral and the multilateral regimes have undergone significant (often underestimated) development, and that the multilateral regime has generally sought to be more ambitious both in its substantive and institutional reach. Yet, both regimes can be described as ultimately weak and their overlap confusing. While a higher juridicization and comprehensive consolidation at the multilateral level of the CIS free trade regime may be recommended, we remain sceptical about its likelihood in the short and medium term.

This article considers the significance of the UK Takeover Code's non-frustration prohibition. It asks to what extent the prohibition actually prevents post-bid, director-controlled defences that would not have been, in any event, either formally prohibited by UK company law without share-holder approval or practically ineffective as a result of the basic UK company law rule set. It finds that there would be minimal scope for director-deployed defences in the absence of the non-frustration prohibition, and that, in the context of UK company law, such defences have limited scope to be deployed for entrenchment purposes. Furthermore, this minimal scope for board defensive action would, in order to be compliant with a director's duties, require a pre-bid, shareholder-approved alteration to the UK's default constitutional balance of power between the board and the shareholder body to allow corporate powers to be used for defensive effect. In light of this conclusion the article looks for a rationale to justify denying shareholders the right to make this limited and potentially beneficial defensive election. It concludes that no persuasive rationale is available and that the prohibition is unnecessary and without justification.

In Europe part of the rule-making and the whole enforcement of financial services regulation still take place at national level. For this reason, mutual recognition of national financial laws remains an element of central importance in the creation and regulation of a European market in this field. This article seeks to contribute to the analysis of such legal instrument, as several aspects of its functioning often appear unclear. The article starts by analysing the principle of mutual recognition as developed by the European Court of Justice. An important distinction is drawn between such judicially created principle and the principle of mutual recognition applied by the EC legislator. The article then looks at the question of why mutual recognition has not succeeded as a regulatory mechanism of financial services market integration, and at the role of mutual recognition after the introduction of the so-called ‘Lamfalussy’ law-making process to the financial services sector.

This article compares the approach of the Court of Justice in the area of taxation with its general case law on restrictions on free movement. It is argued that the Court, while sometimes referring to the same concepts as in the field of regulatory barriers, is in practice employing a narrower test. The possible reasons for the comparatively cautious approach are analysed and the issue of double taxation is examined, with reference also to the US case law. Finally, the connections to larger questions concerning the nature of the single market and the roles of the Community institutions are noted.

Does the rise of international arbitration signify a retreat of the State from classical adjudication? In examining this question, it is important to distinguish contract-based arbitration of individual claims against the State from arbitration pursuant to investment treaties. The former is broadly limited to the private sphere of the State's activity, whereas the latter gives arbitrators a comprehensive jurisdiction over public law. An elaboration of this distinction, and the grey area within it, demonstrates that the significance of international arbitration for juridical sovereignty is its privatization of the authority to define the very concept of the public sphere.

The issue of religious dress, specifically female Muslim religious dress, has been the subject of intense controversy within Europe over recent years. In the United Kingdom comments by Jack Straw MP, Leader of the House of Commons and a former Home and Foreign Secretary, that he felt uncomfortable talking to women at his constituency surgery who wore the Muslim veil sparked a storm of intense and, at times, acrimonious debate.1 In France the banning of headscarves in State schools has provoked major controversy.2 In the Netherlands the Dutch Parliament voted to ban the burka in public places3 and in five Belgian towns its wearing has been banned on pain of a fine.4

The EC maritime transport policy was slow to develop. Although the EC Treaty requires the Member States to create a Common Transport Policy,1 the focus of the Treaty transport provisions2 is on inland modes of transport (road, rail and inland waterways).3 However, the EU Council is expressly given competence to decide what ‘appropriate provisions’ may be adopted for maritime and air transport.4

Maritime transport is by its very nature an international mode of transport regulated by a large number of international treaties and conventions, most of them negotiated and concluded within the International Maritime Organization (IMO). Members of the international community, including some EU Member States themselves, were initially reluctant to transfer their sovereignty in this field of transport to the Community. However, two main events gradually changed the attitude of the Member States to the Community's competence to regulate this mode of transport. First, the mid-1980s impetus to establish an internal market by 1992 placed all modes of transport at the centre of the project. It was not feasible to establish a geographical market, stretching from the Atlantic to the Eastern European countries and from the North Sea to the Mediterranean, where goods, people, services and capital would be able to circulate freely,5 and in a competitive manner, without the Community seriously addressing transport issues. Thus, unsurprisingly, a number of important legislative proposals affecting the provisions of maritime transport services were adopted and implemented during that period.6 The second significant factor in the development of a maritime transport policy was the number of serious marine accidents which took place in the Community's coastal waters during the last 20 years.7

The period under review (Autumn 2003–December 2006) saw in not only the expansion of the Union from 15 to 25 Member States, but also the attendant ‘big bang’, on 1 May 2004, in competition rules with the entry into operation of Regulations 1/2003 and 139/2004. The changes introduced by Regulation 1/20031—primarily abandoning the notification/authorization procedure which had obtained since 1962 in favour of a directly effective Article 81(3) and exception légale, and including further measures enabling/compelling the decentralized enforcement of Articles 81 and 82—are discussed in previous notes2 and (copiously) elsewhere, and it is not proposed to rerehearse them here. Rather, the concern is the manner in which the dust has settled, in what is, after the frenetic legislative change and the absorption of 10 new Member States into a new culture of competition, a time of consolidation.

In Harding v Wealands1 the House of Lords had to consider the vexed question of where the dividing line between substance and procedure should lie in private international law. The specific issue before their Lordships was whether matters relating to the assessment of damages in tort should be treated as matters of substance, and thus be for the applicable law, or whether they should be treated as matters of procedure, and therefore be left for the law of the forum. The decision of the House of Lords has resolved this difficult question in favour of a procedural characterization. The result of the House of Lords' decision is that in all such cases, regardless of the foreign law element, the assessment of damages will be conducted in accordance with English (Northern Irish or Scottish) law, as the law of the forum. Nonetheless, some reservations do exist as to the justification for the decision and as to how likely it is to remain the last word on the subject.

In the United Kingdom the law pertaining to domicile has the rather dubious distinction that, although subjected to concerted criticism from commentators and law reformers alike for over half a century, it has largely remained unchanged.1 Common law jurisdictions around the world have succeeded in passing legislation which, to varying degrees, has modernized the concept,2 yet in Britain a series of initiatives have either failed to complete the legislative process or not even made it to Parliament.3 The reason in each instance was less the substance of the proposals, but rather political expediency in the face of pressure from the overseas business community resident in the United Kingdom, who feared extended fiscal liability if the connecting factors were attributed with a less legalistic interpretation.4