The Permanent Court of International Justice was inaugurated on January 30, 1922. The present International Court of Justice held its inaugural meeting on April 18, 1946—the day on which the League of Nations formally ceased to exist. Measured in terms of “business”, the present Court has become a disappointment, and at the beginning of 1970 it had no pending cases on its docket. Today it has one. This situation of decline, which in fact had been evolving ever since the thirties, formed the subject of an important speech by the U.S. Secretary of State on April 25, 1970; it was also commented upon by Secretary-General U Thant in the Introduction to his annual report on the work of the organization submitted to the twenty-fifth session of the United Nations General Assembly. Following this, twelve member States initiated a debate on a new agenda item entitled: “Review of the role of the International Court of Justice”. This debate led to an interim decision inviting the Secretary-General to submit to the next session a comprehensive report, to be based on the replies of States to a questionnaire which he was asked to prepare and circulate.

1. Foreword: The following judgment of the Supreme Court deals with an affair which lies on the periphary of criminal law, but nevertheless may serve as a means of raising a few problems which are of crucial importance in the sphere of penal law. These problems are all attached to one of the two central pillars of every crime, namely: the actus reus. We shall try to prove that even though this concept is well-known and hackneyed, it still contains many deficiencies and is a source of misunderstandings.

First, we shall try to expose the deficiency in the judgment itself, and then we shall proceed to a broader consideration of the perversions in the definitions of the actus reus of certain crimes in the legislation.

2. The Judgment: The matter under trial was as follows: The official receiver (the respondent) applied to the District Court for an order according to sees. 130 and 131 of the Bankruptcy Ordinance to bring the appellant, who is a bankrupt, to trial for offences under these sections. The appellant was invited to the proceedings on that application, gave evidence at the hearing, and after the respective arguments of the parties had been heard, an order was granted by the Court as required by the applicant.

Aircraft hijacking projects a vexing problem of criminal jurisdiction. In order to comprehend the ramifications of the problem fully let us take a model case. Suppose that the control over a commercial aircraft—registered in Brazil and leased to an Israeli airline—is forcibly seized, in the course of flight over France, by an Arab nationalist who is a citizen of Jordan, and the aircraft is hijacked to Algeria. The act described is an international offence, as defined by Article 1 of the 1970 Hague Convention for the Suppression of Unlawful Seizure of Aircraft:

Any person who on board an aircraft in flight:

(a) unlawfully, by force or threat thereof, or by any other form of intimidation, seizes, or exercises control of, that aircraft, or attempts to perform any such act, or

(b) is an accomplice of a person who performs or attempts to perform any such act

commits an offence (hereinafter referred to as ‘the offence’).

1. In his article “Criminal Jurisdiction over Aircraft Hijacking”, Dr. Y. Dinstein analyzes the provisions of the Convention for the Suppression of Unlawful Seizure of Aircraft, of December 16, 1970—hereinafter referred to as “the Hague Convention”. This convention deals with States' jurisdiction with regard to the offence of “hijacking”, as defined by Article 2 of the convention, in accordance with the nature of their connection with the offence committed.

The learned writer, in the course of his analysis, postulates three premises. The first premise is that Article 4 of the Hague Convention lays down an order of preference with respect to the jurisdiction of the States referred to in that Article. The second premise is that this order of preference is reflected in the order of the paragraphs of Article 4 which specify which are the states in question (paragraphs 1 and 2). The third premise is that the Hague Convention does not provide for universal jurisdiction in respect of the offence of hijacking.

It is generally assumed that English directors have a carte blanche privilege to engage at arm's length in transactions involving securities of a corporation which they manage. Thus directors of English corporations may utilize inside information for their personal benefit at the expense of their trading partners. This assumption is derived from the calamitous decision of Percival v. Wright which, subject to illusory limitations imposed by Allen v. Hyatt, is still believed to be the law in England today. Israeli directors, it is believed, share this carte blanche privilege with their English counterparts. This belief derives from the fact that Israeli courts resort to English jurisprudence, when necessary to fill in the gaps which are found to exist in Israeli law.

This paper questions the validity of the above assumptions. It is an attempt to evaluate whether or not an English or Israeli director, or another insider, may indeed utilize inside information to trade in the securities of his corporation without regard to rules governing fiduciary relationships and other legal principles, which, it is submitted, the English judiciary and bar have thus far overlooked.