Search

Recent federal court decisions have deregulated state campaign finance systems to a significant degree. These decisions are not only rooted in First Amendment jurisprudence but also raise issues of federalism. Although most studies of federal–state conflict focus on disputes between state officials and elected federal policy makers, courts are also policy-making institutions, and in the absence of policy making by other federal branches, courts have become the critical federal policy maker in this area. In response to U.S. Supreme Court rulings that deregulate campaign finance rules and are out of step with the policy preferences of many state electorates and officials, states are attempting to resist these rulings, but using different approaches than are used by states in disputes with the Congress or President. We discuss these rulings and state responses to them. We also describe the implications of these dynamics for federalism.

A hundred and fifty years after the judicial reform by Tsar Alexander II, the Russian judicial system is undergoing yet another significant reorganization. In 2014, the Highest Arbitrazh (Commercial) Court was abolished and its functions and authority were transferred to the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation. The current rules of civil and arbitrazh procedure are under review, to be consolidated in the forthcoming unified Civil Procedural Code. This Article focuses on one aspect of the reform: the adjudicative jurisdiction of Russian courts. It critically analyzes the existing rules of jurisdiction, examines their historical predispositions, and offers suggestions for improvement in light of the impending reform. The topic of international jurisdiction appears particularly relevant, given recent international developments, such as the revision of the European Brussels I Regulation on Jurisdiction and the Recognition and Enforcement of Judgments, entry into force of the Hague Convention on Choice of Court Agreements, etc. The Russian judicial reform represents a unique opportunity to improve the country’s procedural fairness, which is significant both for Russian residents and international litigants. Thus, the Article seeks to inform the international audience on current developments in the field in Russia and aims to contribute to the English legal scholarship on private international law.

This article discusses the question of the territorial jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court over international crimes committed through the Internet. It argues that the Court may assert its territorial jurisdiction over such conduct consistently with international law and the Rome Statute, by localising the cyber-commission of a core crime in whole or in part within the territory of States Parties. However, to mitigate state complaints of jurisdictional overreach, it further argues that the Court could avoid the outright endorsement of extensive versions of territorial jurisdiction. Instead, it should pursue first a detailed analysis of core crimes, followed by a well-versed application of territoriality. In closing, the article discusses the application of this approach in the example of online incitement to commit genocide.

It is settled that any challenge to a tribunal's jurisdiction must be reheard by the court. However, the case law is inconsistent on the question whether, in the rehearing, new evidence should be admitted as of right or only in limited circumstances and with the court's permission. The inconsistency is illustrated by two recent judgments. This note argues that a party seeking to adduce new evidence should have to seek permission from the court and explain why the evidence was not put before the tribunal. This approach should encourage the parties to act in good faith during the arbitration proceeding.

In this article, we draw on a prominent model of public management to develop a preliminary theoretical approach to understanding the role of the chief justice in Supreme Court decision-making. In particular, we argue that the Court may seek legitimacy through greater unanimity and discuss how the leadership of the chief justice can facilitate that effort. We assess a hypothesis derived from this theory, showing greater agreement among the justices as the incumbent chief justice’s tenure in office increases. We argue that these results provide support for further attention to and development of a public administration-based approach to the study of Supreme Court decision-making. The application of public administration to judicial politics provides further evidence of management dynamics in American institutions.

The Colombian Constitutional Court has gained a high reputation around the world. In a country that is plagued by the war on drugs, violence, inequalities, and corruption, the court has managed to strengthen the rights of the displaced and homeless victims of these conflicts, women, workers, sick persons, and other underprivileged social groups. The trust of the citizens in the court therefore is high, which is reflected in the constantly growing number of constitutional complaints and judicial reviews. By proving its independence, the court has also earned the respect of politicians. However, the court took on this role only gradually, and had to learn from mistakes made at the beginning. This article presents not only the history and the most important achievements of the court from its founding to the present, but also addresses the challenges it faces.

The objective of promulgation of the New York Convention, 1958, was to ensure the recognition and enforcement of foreign arbitral awards in Member States. Contrary to the letter and spirit of that objective, certain provisions enshrined in the Convention have given room to national courts for un-harmonized interpretation, thereby causing undesirable delay in the enforcement of awards. Article V(1)(e) represents one such provision that has been subject to different treatments by the courts at distinct jurisdictions. A widely endorsed international interpretation seemingly exists parallel to a parochial one adopted by a few jurisdictions, including Pakistan. The decision given in the Taisei v A.M. Construction Co. by the Lahore High Court further consolidates the position of Pakistani courts in this regard. However, the matter is now pending adjudication before the Supreme Court of Pakistan. It remains to be seen whether the Apex Court will nullify the High Court’s ruling and proceed to deposit a new precedent in conformity with international arbitral practice. Pakistani Recognition and Enforcement of (Arbitration Agreements and Foreign Awards) Act (2011) Pakistani Arbitration Act (1940) (New York) Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards (1958) Taisei Corporation v AM Construction Co (Pvt.) Ltd , Lahore High Court (2012) Bharat Aluminium Co v Kaiser Aluminium Technical Service, Inc , Supreme Court of India (2012) Hitachi Ltd v Rupali Polyester and ors , Supreme Court of Pakistan (1998)

In an article published in Volume 28, Number 1, pp 63–76 in the LCIA Arbitration International, Dr Ola O Olatawura contended that sections 34 and 57 of the Nigerian Arbitration and Conciliation Act, Cap A18 LFN 2004 limit litigation in arbitration matters to only first instance courts and that appellate courts lack the jurisdiction to entertain appeals from arbitration matters in Nigeria. This rejoinder re-examines the article written by Dr Olatawura and contends that the conclusions reached by him fail to take into account the fact that Nigeria has a written constitution, the constitution is supreme, judicial powers are vested in the courts established by the constitution, the jurisdiction vested in both the state and federal high courts (first instance courts) and the appellate system in Nigeria. The conclusion of this rejoinder is that both the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court have jurisdiction to hear appeals from the first instance courts in arbitration matters in Nigeria and that the jurisdiction is not extra-legal.

This article traces the development of the adjudicatory jurisdiction of the English courts between the seventeenth and twentieth centuries. The account provides, it is submitted, a number of valuable insights, which call into question current accounts of the common law rules governing both the adjudicatory jurisdiction of local courts and the recognition and enforcement of foreign judgments. The author’s principal contention is that the so-called ‘principles’ of presence and submission, which are central tenets of English private international law, are not only unsatisfactory in principle, but lacking in historical support as elements of the common law landscape.

While the doctrine of stare decisis has in general received a great deal of scholarly attention over the years, one aspect of the norm which has been the subject of little, if any, doctrinal inquiry, however, is the emergence of a doctrine of de jure horizontal stare decisis at the international level, most notably by the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ), in the exercise of its original jurisdiction. By reference to the CCJs rapidly evolving jurisprudence, this article argues that, at the conceptual level, this development is unique to international law to the extent that the court’s reliance on precedents is pursuant to a treaty-mandate as opposed to a judicial strategy, but not at all very different in practice from the de facto approach to precedent which characterizes the jurisprudence of other international courts and tribunals. The question of whether the CCJs de jure approach to the treatment of precedents contributes in any way to the fragmentation or pluralism of international law is also addressed by this article.

This article is about the pharma patent litigation sparked by Lundbeck's blockbuster drug for escitalopram. The article focuses on the trials and tribulations before the Dutch Patent Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court, while also briefly contrasting and comparing this with the decisions in Germany and the United Kingdom. Particular attention is given to novel substances which can be fully envisaged but not yet made. Under the doctrine, set out by the Technical Boards of Appeal, such envisaged substance can still be considered to be non-obvious and therefore patented if the claimed method for preparing such substance is the first to achieve this in an inventive manner. The Dutch Supreme Court follows this doctrine. The author criticizes the lack of explanation provided by the Supreme Court in reversing the decision of the Court of Appeal. By merely referring to foreign precedent, the Supreme Court violates its (own) duty to state (its own) reasons. The article concludes by outlining the practical impact of the decision of the Supreme Court: inventors developing a (novel and) inventive process for obtaining a (novel) product which can be fully envisaged but not yet made, can obtain not only a process claim for inventing the process, but also monopolize the substance under a product claim.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) is the first international criminal justice institution that explicitly promises to deliver justice for victims by providing for the rights of victims to participation and reparation in criminal proceedings. More than a decade after its establishment, the time is right to consider how this new idea of justice for victims has developed at the ICC. While analysis of the ICC’s framework has benefited from international law and other academic disciplines, such as international relations and politics, there has been too little attention paid to international criminal justice by mainstream criminologists and victimologists. To fill this gap, this article will systematically reflect on the similarities and differences in the evolution of the idea of justice for victims at domestic criminal courts and the ICC from a criminological and victimological perspective. Overall, the comparison suggests that while the concept of justice for victims has been mainly understood in terms of the benefits and problems of incorporating victims’ rights into criminal law procedure in the domestic context, at the ICC, it has led to broader contestations and redefinitions of the very meaning of justice. These contestations on justice have to be understood in the institutional context of a still young and sui generis court that is unsure of the kind of justice it can and should deliver.

Jurisdiction has traditionally been considered in international law as purely a question of the rights and powers of states. Conceived in this way, the rules on jurisdiction serve the important function of delimiting (while accepting some overlap of) state regulatory authority – the question of when a person or event may be subject to national regulation – a function which is shared with the cognate discipline of private international law. This article suggests that the idea and the rules of jurisdiction in international law require reconceptualisation in light of three developments. The first is the growing recognition that in a range of circumstances the exercise of national jurisdiction may, under international law, be a question of duty or obligation rather than right. The second development is the increased acceptance that such jurisdictional duties may in some circumstances be owed not only to other states but also to private parties, particularly through the emergence and strengthening of the doctrines of denial of justice and access to justice. The third development is the widely recognised phenomenon known as party autonomy, under which private parties in civil disputes have the power to confer jurisdiction on national courts and to determine themselves which law governs their relationships. In combination, these developments suggest the necessity of rethinking the concept of jurisdiction in international law, to reflect the more complex realities of an international legal order under which states possess both jurisdictional rights and obligations and are no longer the exclusive actors.

Over the course of this article we analyse the complete set of patent cases filed at the Patents Court in England and Wales during the period 2000–2008. The data cover all types of patent-related cases brought before the Patents County Court, the Patents Court at the High Court, the Court of Appeal, as well as the House of Lords/Supreme Court. We combine the detailed information on court cases with information on the patents in dispute as well as firm-level data for the litigating parties. Our analysis looks at patent cases from three different angles: litigant-level, patent-level, and case-level. In this respect we draw a number of conclusions about the types of claims brought, and by whom, as well as the value of the patents litigated and the case outcomes.

On 26 June 2013, the Supreme Court of the United States rendered judgment in two cases involving same-sex marriage. United States v Windsor, 570 US __, 2013 WL 3196928, No 12-307, invalidated a provision of a federal law, Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which defined marriage as the union of a man and a woman for all purposes in federal law. Hollingsworth v Perry, 570 US __ , 2013 WL 3196927, No 12-144, held that the official sponsors of a California state constitutional amendment [Proposition 8 (Prop 8)], which defined marriage as the union of a man and a woman for purposes of state law, lacked standing to seek judicial review of a federal district court judgment that ruled Prop 8 was unconstitutional. Both cases were decided on 5-4 votes. The Windsor case was filed by Edith Windsor, who had entered into a samesex marriage in Canada that was deemed valid in New York, where she and her partner lived. New York is one of 12 American states which, at the time of the Windsor ruling, had legalized same-sex marriage. Her same-sex spouse died in 2009 leaving Ms Windsor her entire estate. Ms Windsor’s claim for a federal estate tax exemption as the surviving ‘spouse’ was denied under Section 3 of DOMA, adopted by Congress in 1996. Ms Windsor paid the federal estate tax allegedly owing ($363,053) but filed a claim for a refund, which also was denied by the Internal Revenue Service. Ms Windsor then sued in federal court. While her suit was pending, President Obama and his Attorney General took the unusual step of announcing that the administration would no longer defend DOMA. The House of Representatives thereupon voted to allow some of their members, the Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group (BLAG), to intervene

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the International Criminal Court (ICC) constitute two prominent international courts. However, there exists considerable variation in states' support for these two institutions. The Rome Statute, which recognizes the jurisdiction of the ICC has been ratified by over half the states in the world; only a third of states accept the compulsory jurisdiction of the ICJ. How are we to understand this variation in state support for these two courts? I argue that there is an inherent link between the quality of a state's domestic legal system (rule of law) and perceived legitimacy of an international court. Empirical analyses of states' support for the ICJ and the ICC show that rule-of-law states lend support to the ICC, a court perceived by the international community as legitimate. Alleged bias of the ICJ has, on the other hand, substantially weakened support for this court among rule-of-law states.

Since the UNCITRAL Model Arbitration Law (‘MAL’) 1985 became the generally adopted standard, local courts’ powers and roles in arbitration-related issues have been strictly limited. This article examines the jurisdiction of Nigeria's appellate courts under the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, Cap A. 18 LFN 2004. It contends that sections 34 and 57, Cap A. 18 LFN 2004, which are based on Articles 5 and 6, UNCITRAL MAL 1985, limit litigation in arbitration matters to only first instance courts. The current free appeals disregards the law, promote delays, frustrates the policy of finality and speedy settlement, and affects the choice of ‘Nigerian law’ in arbitration agreements. These results whittle the growth of the arbitration industry and the desire to make Nigeria a credible regional base for international arbitration services. There being no exceptional case for appeals in the law, appellate courts should reject or summarily dismiss cases for want of jurisdiction. However because of advantages of appellate courts' jurisdiction, the courts and legislator must now carefully craft doctrine and statutes to reduce unnecessary appeals that defeat the basis for arbitration.

On 27 July 2011, the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom delivered its judgment in Jivraj v. Hashwani,[1][1] unanimously overturning last year's decision of the English Court of Appeal. The facts of this case and the decision of the Court of Appeal have been widely discussed and will be only briefly addressed here. The decision of the Supreme Court has been met with approval within the international arbitration community in London, having restored the legal position to that prior to the Court of Appeal's ruling. Most importantly, it has removed the shadow of doubt which had been cast by the Court of Appeal's decision as to the validity of arbitration agreements incorporating institutional rules. Although on its facts, Jivraj was concerned with discrimination on the grounds of religion, the effect of the Court of Appeal's decision and the operation of UK employment equality law was to render susceptible to challenge the nationality restrictions commonly included in institutional rules. This article will question where the limits on party autonomy in the selection of arbitrators lie following the Supreme Court's decision. In particular, the role of section 1(b) of the Arbitration Act 1996 (the ‘Act’) will be examined, with consideration given to the role which the public interest should play in restricting parties' selection of arbitrators. [1]: #fn-1

The recent issuance of arrest warrants by European judges against African officials on the basis of universal jurisdiction has led to diplomatic tensions between African and European states. For this reason, at the 11th AU-EU Ministerial Troika Meeting the Ministers agreed to set up a technical ad hoc expert group to provide a description of the legal notion of the principle of universal jurisdiction and to outline its respective understandings on the African and the European side. On 16 April 2009, the final AU-EU Expert Report on the Principle of Universal Jurisdiction was issued. This comment examines the concerns expressed and the legal arguments and recommendations made in the Report. The author describes where those arguments may be located within the complex concept of universal jurisdiction under international law, stressing the distinction between universal jurisdiction to prescribe and universal jurisdiction to adjudicate. According to the Report, both customary and conventional international law allow for universal jurisdiction. The exercise of universal jurisdiction is, moreover, restricted neither by a requirement that the suspect be present on the territory of the prosecuting state, nor by considerations of subsidiarity. However, the vagueness of international law relative to the legal parameters of universal jurisdiction as well as its difficult relationship with long-established ‘ordinary’ national procedural regimes may provoke criticism.

ON 7 JANUARY 2008, the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in Gulf Petro Trading Co., Inc. v. Nigerian National Petroleum Corp .1 affirmed the dismissal of Gulf Petro’s claim of bribery in the course of the underlying foreign arbitration for lack of subject matter jurisdiction.2 The court determined that Gulf Petro’s claim, though presented as an action under state and federal law for fraud and conspiracy, was an attempt to set aside the final arbitral award, and that the ‘[New York] Convention dictates that a United States court, sitting in secondary jurisdiction, lacks jurisdiction to consider such an action’.3 This result confirms the autonomy of international arbitration and the purpose of the New York Convention to enforce arbitral awards in foreign jurisdictions.4 Of particular value in the court’s decision is its definition of a collateral attack on an arbitral award, and its assessment that collateral attacks are the subject matter of courts of primary jurisdiction. The court held that a claim amounts to a collateral attack when the harm at issue is not caused by the acts complained of in and of themselves, but by the impact of the alleged wrongdoing on a final arbitral award.5 When the petitioning party’s desired relief is the modification or vacatur of the arbitral award, the court concluded that, regardless of the law under which the claims are raised, the New York Convention limits jurisdiction over the claims to the courts of primary jurisdiction.6 Factually, the case involves a seemingly benign contract dispute which turned ugly as the arbitral process concluded and, in an effort to vacate the award, Gulf Petro alleged corruption of the arbitral panel. The high intrigue of the allegations against the panel is riveting but serious reading – a sobering reminder …

In the case of Boumediene v. Bush, the Supreme Court found that foreign "enemy combatants," detained by the US military at Guantanamo Bay, had a constitutional right to petition for the writ of habeas corpus in a federal court, and that Congress had unlawfully restricted this right with the Military Commissions Act of 2006. Importantly, though, in considering the constitutional scope of habeas corpus, the Boumediene Court studied its origins in English law and portrayed habeas as having an especially important "legacy" in Anglo-American law, which supported an expansive view of federal court jurisdiction. With this approach, the Supreme Court’s emerging doctrine of "effective control" now determines territorial jurisdiction based upon the actual degree of control that the government exercises over a place or person, rather than formalistic national boundaries. In this way, Boumediene put forward a more functional approach to assessing habeas jurisdiction.

In July 2008, the Italian Court of Cassation held that Italian courts lacked jurisdiction over the 2005 killing in Baghdad by a US serviceman of an Italian intelligence officer in civilian clothes and the wounding of another officer and a reporter. The Court asserted that the action was accomplished by the serviceman while fulfilling his official duties, and that he therefore enjoyed functional immunity from foreign courts. According to the Court, this immunity was not removed by the fact that the killing allegedly amounted to a war crime. The Court took the view that war crimes are ‘grave breaches’ of international humanitarian law, and must be large-scale, odious and inhuman, as well as intentional acts, whereas the killing at issue was not. The author argues that the Court premised its reasoning on a clearly erroneous definition of war crimes.

In June 2007, the Supreme Court of Canada expressly overruled 20 years of jurisprudence that interpreted the freedom of association as excluding collective bargaining. This about-face by the Supreme Court was unexpected. What gave rise to this remarkable decision and what does it portend for the role of the courts in labour relations in Canada and beyond? The recent successes before courts have led some observers to suggest that it may now be a propitious time for a coordinated and proactive litigation strategy to vindicate labour's collective rights. This article offers some preliminary answers to these broader questions and issues by focussing on the Supreme Court's decision in the Health Services and Support case. © Industrial Law Society; all rights reserved.

In its Merits Judgment in the Genocide case, the International Court of Justice had to deal with the procedural question whether Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro), at the time of the 1996 Preliminary Objections Judgment, had access to the Court. Given the unclear status of Yugosla- via within the United Nations between 1993 and 2000, this was highly doubtful. The Court avoided a defi nitive answer to that question by holding that it could not reopen the 1996 judg- ment which enjoyed the force of res judicata. The Court's overly broad application of the res judicata principle as well as its failure to examine ex offi cio Yugoslavia's status as a party in proceedings before the Court are not entirely convincing in legal terms. However, given the overall procedural and political circumstances prevailing in that case, the Court in 2007 had no other option than to reaffi rm its jurisdiction and to proceed to deciding the merits of the case. 1 The 2007 Judgment - The End of a Procedural Odyssey The Merits Judgment of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the case concern- ing the Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (Bosnia and Herzegovina v. Serbia and Montenegro) 1 put an end to the odyssey of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Serbia and Montenegro and, eventually, Ser- bia through various stages of proceedings in different cases before the International Court - an odyssey that frequently was on the verge of turning into an ' oddity ' . It is

Though provided with the authority to strike down any offi cial act, the Supreme Court of Japan has been widely regarded as reluctant to use that very substantial power. The author describes some institutional and doctrinal factors that might explain the Court’s seemingly passivist stance, concluding that the Court has understood its main task to be the preservation of “ pluralist democracy, ” and that its decisions have been reasonably effective in realizing this goal.

This article presents a brief overview of developments relating to the International Court of Justice during 2006 and reports on certain revisions and additions that were introduced to the Practice Directions and on the latest changes in the Court's composition. Finally, a brief outlook is presented on the basis of the status of the Court's docket as on 31 December 2006.

The selection process for U.S. Supreme Court justices has grown ever more complex. Presidents have the constitutional power to nominate justices, and, in doing so, they have employed several criteria at different times, including professional merit, ideological compatibility, and political support by the president and his advisers. Under the Constitution, the Senate has the authority to consent to or reject appointees. In recent decades it has used public hearings to ascertain a nominee's qualifications and, within certain limitations, the nominee's ideological attitudes. This process is intensely political and, as such, it reflects the Supreme Court's broad authority as the final interpreter of the Constitution, many of whose provisions raise highly contestable issues of great political significance. This article discusses these matters in light of Supreme Court appointments over the past century.

COURTS IN Model Law jurisdictions are currently divided on an issue that is of great practical and theoretical importance. It concerns the extent of the review of arbitral jurisdiction to be undertaken by a court seised of a referral application based on Article 8(1). Provided that it has been made in a timely manner, such an application can only be dismissed if the agreement is either inapplicable or ‘null and void, inoperative or incapable of being performed’ – in other words if the action does not fall within the ambit of an arbitration agreement which is, from a legal standpoint, fully binding.1 In a nutshell, the debate concerns whether the court can perform a full review of the arbitration agreement's validity and applicability – in which case the claim could only be referred to arbitration upon a finding that the claimant actually acted in breach of an undertaking to arbitrate – or whether the court should rather apply a prima facie standard and refer to arbitration upon finding that there is a reasonable likelihood that the claimant acted in breach of a duty to arbitrate. The text of Article 8(1) provides no clear answer. In practice, this debate matters because the court's role has direct consequences on the cost, duration and complexity of referral, as well as on the likelihood that a court will refuse to assert jurisdiction over a claim that allegedly falls within the ambit of an arbitration agreement. From a theoretical standpoint, the debate is essentially about the true basis of the court's obligation to refer the parties to arbitration and a tension between, on the one hand, ensuring the efficiency of the arbitral process and, on the other hand, dealing promptly and finally with objections to the tribunal's jurisdiction in order to ensure that the …

The 2005 Resolution of the Institut de Droit international (IDI) on universal jurisdiction lends support to the idea that states may exercise universal jurisdiction over crimes under international law. It subjects such exercise to a set of limitations including, in particular, the principle of subsidiarity and the observance of human rights. Regarding the controversial issue of so-called universal jurisdiction in absentia, the Resolution steers a middle course by allowing investigative measures while excluding trials in absentia. The author agrees with these notions. At the same time, he is of the view that the Resolution suffers from a number of weaknesses and that several of its propositions may bear refinement. Conceptually, the Resolution adopts an unduly modest approach. It deals with the jurisdiction element of universal jurisdiction in an unspecified manner. Universality requires a distinction between universal jurisdiction by representation of one or more states directly connected with the crime and true universal jurisdiction to be exercised in the interest of the international community as a whole. True universal jurisdiction is confined to crimes under international law (as distinct from transnational crimes) and its adjudicative exercise is subject to a special regime. Regrettably, the Resolution remains inconclusive as to what extent crimes against humanity and war crimes are subject to universal jurisdiction. The Resolution suggests that states may exercise adjudicative universal jurisdiction in the form of investigative measures in the absence of the suspect and that they may, where the investigation so justifies, request the suspect's extradition. According to this author, the correct explanation for this proposition is the fact that to the extent that a customary title to true prescriptive universal jurisdiction has been proven to exist, states may exercise adjudicative universal jurisdiction by investigating alleged crimes in absentia, because of the absence of a prohibitive customary rule. The author argues that the adjudicative exercise of true universal jurisdiction has become subject to a legal limitation of subsidiarity vis-a-vis one or more states directly concerned. Such limitation applies as from the end of the investigation stage and is, in turn, conditioned by the genuine will and ability of the state(s) of primary jurisdiction to investigate and, where appropriate, prosecute. The article concludes with an appeal to the states to face the challenge to work out an international convention on true universal jurisdiction.

In 2004, for the first time in history, the United States Supreme Court addressed the meaning and scope of the Alien Tort Statute (ATS) of 1789. Originally intended to provide redress for acts of piracy or offences against ambassadors, the Statute has been used since the 1980 watershed case of Filartiga v. Pena-Irala to award damages in civil trials in the United States to foreign victims of, inter alia, torture, summary execution and forced disappearance. Opponents have claimed, among other things, that use of the ATS shows disregard for principles of international comity; is inconsistent with principles governing the use of universal jurisdiction; and results in an imperialist American privatization of human rights. The author argues that the Supreme Court's decision in Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain limits the ATS to a tool of complementary justice consistent with prevailing principles of global accountability.

Recent legal scholarship has argued that the traditional hierarchical relationship between international courts and domestic courts has been replaced by a relationship characterized by such features as co-operation, communication and dialogue. This article examines to what extent the practice of the International Court of Justice supports that development. It concludes that the while the case law of the International Court of Justice remains largely rooted in the traditional perspective, in which decisions of domestic courts are just facts, in recent cases we can see some evidence for a more complementary relationship.