The purpose of this paper is the comparative study of the jurisdictional functions performed by attachment and garnishment under Belgian and American law. In other words, an attempt will be made to ascertain how and to what extent Belgian and American courts may adjudicate upon claims involving foreigners whose assets are found within their respective jurisdictions.

The 1971 Constitutional Amendments (Amendments XX-XLII) gave far-reaching legislative competence to the six republics and two autonomous provinces that form the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. This line of development has been confirmed by the 1974 Federal Constitution and the Constitutions of the republics and of the autonomous provinces, enacted the same year. Article 281 of the new Federal Constitution enumerates the remaining federal legislative competence. In doing so, it reserves substantial powers in the area of contracts and property, but it leaves barely any room for federal intervention in the area of family law and succession. Outside the realm of legal relationships that are —in the event that they contain a foreign element— traditionally settled by the rules of Private International Law, under the new constitutions in Yugoslavia a diversity of legislations and accordingly conflicts of laws are possible in the area of taxation, social security, criminal law, some administrative matters such as identity cards, academic degrees, bar examinations, etc.

War zones have long ceased to be a novelty, but they remain a legal enigma. Although existing for almost a century, the issue remains unsettled, feeding prolonged legal speculation. The question of the legality of war zones typifies the kind of legal controversies with which a potential codification attempt for the laws of naval warfare will have to cope. The problem arises when an antiquated body of law intersects proliferating State practice which runs contrary to its dictates, when new realities come to upset fundamental principles of humanitarian law.

The International Court of Justice, in its two successive guises, has on several occasions already had to deal with cases in which its own jurisdiction in the dispute brought before it was at issue. In nearly every instance when its jurisdiction to take cognizance of the merits of a case was challenged, the proceedings were divided, according to a provision in the Court's Rules of Procedure now embodied in Article 62, into a preliminary and a final phase, although such a division is not obligatory in the sense that the defendant party retains its freedom to raise its objections to the Court's jurisdiction not as a preliminary but simultaneously with its defence on the merits.

The Sixth International Tin Agreement (hereinafter ‘ITA6’) came into force on 17 July 1982 and has as its object the stabilization and development of the international tin market for the benefit of producer and consumer States. ITA6 provides for the maintenance of floor and ceiling prices for tin, to be achieved, in part, by the establishment of an international buffer stock financed by government contributions and loans. The operation of the buffer stock is entrusted to the institutional arm of ITA6, the International Tin Council (hereinafter ‘ITC’), which has the power to borrow for the purposes of the buffer stock and to appoint a Buffer Stock Manager. Up to October 1985 the ITC, acting through the Buffer Stock Manager, defended the official floor price of tin, as set by the ITC, by making cash purchases and by financing future purchases through broker and bank loans amounting to some 900 million pounds sterling.

It is sometimes argued that States who do not want to see the legal regime concerning nuclear weapons altered, will have, for precisely that reason, serious difficulties in ratifying the 1977 Protocol additional to the Geneva Convention of 12 August 1949, especially Protocol I relating to the protection of victims of international armed conflicts.

In many countries, including our own, the question whether there should be a right to strike, and, if so, to what extent, and with what restrictions, has been and still is hotly debated. There remain few countries where strikes are absolutely prohibited. On the other hand there are also few countries where the right to strike is an inalienable right vested in the constitution. The legislator can adopt various attitudes towards the strike by making a strike a criminal offence, by granting the liberty to strike or the right to strike. In most countries the second attitude prevails; strikes are considered a fairly normal phenomenon though not guaranteed as a right. The method of assesment of the possible illegality of strikes, and the sanctions imposed on workers or trade unions, vary greatly.

The market impact of the Convention on civil litigation in the six original Member States was a matter of concern with several speakers. It was stressed in particular that the mere solution of jurisdictional problems may require extensive research of substantive issues, which possibly could lead to litigation at three national levels. If the possibility of submitting preliminary questions under the 1971 Protocol to the EC Court at Luxemburg is also taken into account, five judgments could even be required to settle the question which court in the Common Market is competent. Although perhaps inspiring lawyers' intellectual efforts, this situation would unfortunately increase the litigation costs to the parties. Moreover, the final text of the EC Draft on the law applicable to contractual and non-contractual obligations is progressing and the EC Court will be charged with ensuring the uniform interpretation of this convention as well. One can imagine questions being put to the European Court in each of the three stages of a dispute, viz., the jurisdiction phase, the applicable law, and the enforcement in another Member State.

The current transformation process of the American conflict of laws system from a traditional “hard-and-fast” body of jurisdiction-selecting rules to a modern method of functional analysis has raised a widespread wave of interested, diverse and, more often than not, critical reactions. Criticism to the new approach is particularly strong outside the United States and especially in the civil law countries where a certain number of established scholars tend to reject the functional methods as a rudely disguised way of always applying the forum law. Be that as it may –and a closer first hand examination of its doctrinal and jurisprudential sources may discover that the functional analysis is indeed an intelligent and sophisticated method of dealing with choice of laws problems—the fact is that American courts are increasingly applying the language and the substance of the new approach to solve both interstate and international conflicts. The following selective examination of some of these latter cases permits us to illustrate how the functional analysis actually works in practice and to evaluate to what extent this new approach might also be operative as a method of solving international conflict of laws.

In the following pages I intend to survey the judgments of the International Court of Justice pronounced in the course of 1959.

Owing to the differing degrees of importance from the legal point of view of the individual cases dealt with, their discussion will necessarily vary in length and thoroughness.

Since 1 March 2002 the EC Regulation No. 44/2001 on Jurisdiction and the Recognition and Enforcement of Judgments in Civil and Commercial Matters (hereinafter referred to as the ‘Brussels I’ Regulation) operates in legal practice. On 1 May 2004 the new EU Member States had to accept the ‘Brussels I’ Regulation as acquis communautaire. The Regulation is now in force in all EU Member States, with the exception of Denmark. As mentioned in the previous survey, it is the intention to conclude eventually a convention with Denmark in which the solutions reached under the ‘Brussels I’ Regulation will be laid down. Then the necessary unity in the application of the rules of jurisdiction and of recognition and enforcement will be restored again. According to Article 68 EC the EC Court of Justice can give preliminary rulings on the interpretation of the ‘Brussels I’ Regulation. Although the first questions are put before the ECJ, there is no decision as yet in which the ‘Brussels I’ Regulation has been interpreted. In one decision regarding the interpretation of Article 5(3) Brussels Convention concerning the forum delicti, the ECJ referred to the solutions reached under the same provision in the ‘Brussels I’ Regulation. The Court decided that Article 5(3) Brussels Convention could also be used in case the harmful event might occur.

This article focuses on a number of recent decisions of English courts addressing issues of international law. The starting point is the House of Lords decision in Kuwait Airways v. Iraqi Airways (2002) that effect would not be given in English law to a decree of the Iraqi state which breached international law. Subsequent decisions exploring the role of international law in the context of the justiciability of UK state action have failed to follow Kuwait Airways' lead unless required to apply international law by statute, usually the Human Rights Act 1998. Cases involving terrorism and human rights and attacks on the UK's stance and involvement in Iraq have revealed further questions about the role of international law in English courts and elsewhere. The article examines how subtle movement is taking place in the approach taken by English judges to matters of international law particularly in the context of human rights but that executive action in foreign affairs remains largely immune from judicial scrutiny.