On 14 November 2011 professor Johannes (‘Hans’) P. Verheul passed away at the age of 83 at his home in Voorburg (The Netherlands). Hans Verheul was member of the Board of Editors of the NILR from 1969 to 1990.

This article examines the extent to which state officials are shielded from foreign jurisdiction by functional immunity when they stand accused of committing international crimes. It argues that the development of the principle of individual responsibility for international crimes should be understood as posing a limit to the operation of the rule of functional immunity. States have agreed that international crimes, even when committed within the context of the ostensible exercise of state authority under international law, do not qualify as official acts for functional immunity purposes since they can no longer be solely attributed to the state and not to the official personally. The article thereby takes issue with the increasingly popular conceptualization of functional immunity in terms of an act of state immunity, in which attribution, rather than exclusive attribution, is the controlling notion. It does acknowledge that international law may pose limits on the competence of national courts to establish jurisdiction in certain circumstances, but proposes to undo the discussion of the shackles of immunity law and to recognize the operation of an alternative, less far-reaching legal principle.

The territorial scope of the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court was an issue which was hotly debated prior to the adoption of the Rome Statute. Yet, in the first 10 years of the Court's operation the negotiators' concerns with regard to a jurisdictional overreach seem to have been misplaced. To date, the interpretation and application of Article 12(2)(a) of the Rome Statute – the key provision in this context – have remained uncontroversial. This practice, however, has left certain important questions untouched, and particularly the issue of jurisdiction in cases of the partial commission of a crime on State Party territory. In this context, the question is how little of an international crime should take place on State Party territory for the ICC to have jurisdiction. It is hereby suggested that in order to answer this question, the Court may have recourse to the jurisdictional rule of reason developed by Francis Mann in the context of his work on state jurisdiction and antitrust law. In this context, it is suggested that the Court would have jurisdiction over any case or situation that would have a sufficiently strong connection with the territory of a State Party. The meaning of a ‘sufficiently strong connection’ – an essential ‘reasonableness’ approach, showing the absence of an abuse of rights or arbitrariness – would then need to be specified on a case-by-case basis.

The international regulatory system for the oceans is to a considerable extent dependent upon the effective exercise of flag state responsibilities but general concerns have been raised that some flag states are not fulfilling their international obligations under the international law of the sea.

This article examines the issue of institutional reactions by international organizations against the flag state that has failed to discharge flag state responsibilities, with a view to establishing under what conditions actions may be taken under international law. It analyzes the constitutive instruments and practice of bodies concerning the conservation and management of fisheries resources, three different types of institutions involved in the supervision of the implementation of treaties concerning ship safety, marine environmental protection, maritime labour and maritime security, and the potential role of the United Nations Security Council and the United Nations General Assembly. On the basis of the findings in the above analysis, the article discusses legal requirements for institutional reactions to the flag state that has failed to discharge flag state responsibilities, examining both the internal rules of organizations and general international law, including the Articles of the International Law Commission on Responsibility of International Organizations.

This article addresses the need for uniform jurisdiction rules in cross-border contractual disputes and attempts to put it back on the diplomatic agenda. It seeks to explain why the traditional approach to international jurisdiction in contract disputes should change its focus from the outdated general jurisdiction approach to a more pragmatic step-by-step approach taking into account the commercial nature of contractual relations. Among the many aspects of and explanations for the different approaches to international jurisdiction, this article will concentrate on the idea that the principal foundation of jurisdiction in international contract disputes should be based on the economic allegiance of the defendant. In an attempt to bridge the gap between the different approaches to jurisdiction, the article argues that the way forward for uniform jurisdiction rules in contract disputes should be activity-related jurisdiction and proposes a set of rules principally establishing jurisdiction on the basis of the defendant's fixed place of business or the defendant's substantial business activities in relation to the contract. The proposed set of rules is also put in the light of a series of recent ECJ decisions dealing with the forum contractus rule of Article 5(1) of the Brussels I Regulation and two major US Supreme Court decisions on ‘doing business’ and ‘transacting business’ jurisdiction rendered in 2011.