This paper revisits the English common law rules on the recognition and enforcement of foreign judgments in personam. It seeks to demonstrate that, mainly due to the narrow conception of the foreign courts’ ‘international jurisdictional competence’, the operation of this aspect of the English conflict-of-laws rules gives rise to problematic outcomes. Subsequently, the paper proceeds to identify and evaluate three of the main doctrinal models which have been proposed in response to these shortcomings. It is contended that, despite their virtues, ultimately, none of these models provides the desirable basis for recasting the law. The paper's main contribution is, therefore, to advance an alternative approach for the reformulation of the recognition and enforcement regime at common law. In this regard, it is argued that the foreign courts’ international jurisdictional competence should be defined more broadly as to include the jurisdictional ‘gateways’, presently codified within CPR Practice Direction 6B para 3.1.

The common law rules for recognition and enforcement of foreign judgments were radically reformulated by the Canadian Supreme Court in Beals v Saldanha. Few other common law jurisdictions have considered whether or not to follow Canada in this development in private International Law. In 2012, the Irish Supreme Court definitively rejected the Canadian approach. This note examines the judgment in that case, and assesses the reasoning of the Irish Court.