Current Books

The Palestine Question in International Law (compiled and edited by Victor Kattan)

Victor Kattan
Published: May 2008

The question of Palestine has been a pivotal one for international law ever since the foundation of the United Nations Organisation in 1945. It remains so today. On 9 July 2004, the International Court of Justice gave its advisory opinion on the Legal Consequences of the Construction of a Wall in Occupied Palestinian Territory where it ruled on some major international law questions concerning the applicability of the Geneva Civilians Convention of 1949 to prolonged occupations, as well as human rights law more generally. It confirmed the illegality of the Israeli civilian settlements established on occupied Palestinian territory and affirmed the continuing relevancy of the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination which it considered an obligation erga omnes. The ICJ did not, however, rule on many of the international law questions pertaining to Final Status Issues which still need to be negotiated between the Israeli and Palestinian leadership if peace is to ever be accomplished in the Holy Land. In this series of essays, some of the most important questions relating to the Israel-Palestine conflict are addressed and reproduced in one complete volume to coincide with the 60th anniversary of the demise of the British mandate of Palestine and the creation of Israel.

'It is often suggested that a little goodwill and give and take could resolve the conflict between Israel and Palestine. This collection of some of the best legal analysis of the matter is a timely reminder that there are fundamental legal rights and duties at stake, and basic questions of the Rule of Law, which must be understood and addressed if a just and durable settlement of this desperately sad, and ultimately dehumanizing, situation is to be found' (Professor Vaughan Lowe QC, Chichele Professor of Public International Law, All Souls College, Oxford).

Table of Contents

Foreword by John Dugard

This book will be launched at the Institute on Wednesday 21 May 2008. Please click here for further details.

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International Electronic Evidence (edited by Stephen Mason)

Stephen Mason
Published: May 2008

An increasing number of civil and criminal proceedings involve the use of digital evidence across jurisdictional boundaries. Digital evidence now affects every aspect of law, including contract, employment, family, crime, intellectual property and land law; in effect, no area of law is excluded, and digital evidence has become of greater importance now the Internet and World Wide Web have become ubiquitous.

It is increasingly apparent that criminals and terrorists target the electronic environment to steal, carry out extortion and abuse children across jurisdictions. Additionally, both public and commercial organizations now rely on the digital environment to such an extent that it has become critical to business and, perhaps, the survival of the State.

This new title provides an outline of the substantive law of evidence, admissibility, disclosure, and procedural requirements in respect of digital evidence for the jurisdictions covered, which include: Argentina, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Egypt, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Mexico, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand and Turkey.

Table of Contents
Preface

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Law, Culture, and Economic Development: A Liber Amicorum for Professor Roberto MacLean, CBE

Joseph J Norton, C Paul Rogers, Jr
Published: February 2008

Law, Culture, and Economic Development brings together some of the leading legal scholars, policymakers and practitioners in the international economic development area (with the emphasis on Latin America) to address key issues of legal reform facing developing countries in their effort to achieve accessible, equitable and sustainable economic development: issues of cultural impediments will be stressed. With a preface by Professor Sir Elihu Lauterpacht, QC, CBE, some of the contributing experts include Roberto Danino (former General Counsel of the World Bank), Hernando Desoto (author of the Mystery of Capital), Professor Roberto MacLean (former Head of Judicial Reform at the World Bank), Professor Antonio Parra ( former Deputy-Secretary of ICSID), Dr Teresa Genta-Fons (World Bank Senior Legal Counsel), Professor Bernhard Grossfeld, Professor Jeswald Salacuse, Professor Julio Faundez, Professor Mads Andenas, Professor Beverly Carl, Professor Joseph Norton, Professor Ndiva Kofele Kale, Professor Christopher Hanna, Professor Shubha Ghosh, Professor Diego Bunge, Professor Marcos Valadao, Dr Anna MacLean, and Dr Mauricio Bacquero-Herrara. Topics considered from a developmental perspective include human rights, legal institutions, judicial reform, investment treaties, investment disputes, corruption, financial sector reform, accounting systems, linkage to the WTO, administrative legality, intellectual property, corruption, taxation and legal education reform. The chapters are derived from presentations made at the 2006 Paul Carrington Memorial Lecture at the SMU Dedman School of Law in Dallas, Texas, honouring the distinguished career (as Law Dean, Judge, Central Banker, Ambassador, legal scholar, and judicial reform expert) and 75th birthday of the Hon Roberto MacLean.

The volume is a joint publication of the British Institute of International and Comparative Law (London), the SMU Institute of International Banking, Finance and Technology Law and SMU Law Institute of the Americas (Dallas) at the SMU Dedman School of Law, and the London Forum for International Economic and Development Law, with the editorial assistance of the SMU International Law Review Association (Dallas). The Contemporary Studies Series is the successor to the former Kluwer Law International Yearbook on International Financial and Economic Law.

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NGO Involvement in International Organizations: A Legal Analysis

Sergey Ripinsky, Peter Van den Bossche
Published: December 2007

In light of the growing influence of NGOs in international decision-making, this book investigates the arrangements for NGO involvement in the activities of a range of international institutions, and examines and compares relevant rules and practices.

The analysis focuses in particular on the legal basis for NGO involvement, forms of involvement, NGO participatory rights, applicable accreditation criteria and procedures, and rules on subsequent monitoring of accredited NGOs. International institutions, each covered in a separate chapter, include:

• United Nations Economic and Social Council (UN ECOSOC)
• United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD)
• International Labour Organization (ILO)
• World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO)
• World Health Organization (WHO)
• United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)
• United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)
• World Bank
• World Trade Organization (WTO)
  

The final chapter provides a comparative analysis of the examined systems. Pertinent documents are reproduced in the appendices.

Offering a systematic presentation of the relevant material, the book is as a timely and valuable resource for NGOs that wish to learn more about opportunities for engagement with prominent international organizations. The study will also be a helpful tool in assessing the relative effectiveness of different modalities for engagement with NGOs and in considering improvements to the existing systems.

This book is available to NGOs at the discounted rate of £39 (40% discount on the catalogue price). If you are an NGO and wish to order this book, please email accounts@biicl.org.

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Member: £39
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Liber Amicorum Guido Alpa: Private Law Beyond the National Systems

Mads Andenas; Silvia Diaz Alabart, Sir Basil Markesinis; Hans Micklitz; Nello Pasquini
Published: December 2007

'A festschrift for Guido Alpa, what could be better or indeed more fun', Guido Calabresi writes in the Foreword to this book. He adds, 'the guests come from all over the world and represent the most interesting, the best, each country has to offer. Truly a fête, truly amicorum! . . . Guido Alpa knows the place of theory in law, and knows how to apply it to the forensic arts.

He does this, however, without ever confusing the role of the scholar and that of the advocate. In Guido Alpa both parts are played elegantly, each learns from the other, but the two are never conflated . . . We have come because Guido is truly international in outlook and in feeling . . . Guido stands out because he has always, and almost instinctively, known what it means to have a worldwide view of law. In this he is at one with more than a few of the guests here today, which, in turn, explains their presence.'

Guido Alpa is Professor of Civil Law at the University of Rome 'La Sapienza'. He has held numerous visiting chairs at universities around the world, honorary degrees, and appointments and honours too many to mention.

He is a leading scholar of private and commercial law, but also covers many constitutional and regulatory topics, moving freely across the boundaries that divide the law. He is recognized internationally as a leading comparativist but also as one of the parents of European private law.

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Investment Treaty Law: Current Issues II

Federico Ortino, Lahra Liberti
Published: August 2007

In 2005, as part of its research activities in the field of investment treaty law and arbitration, the Investment Treaty Forum at the British Institute of International and Comparative Law organized two very successful public conferences in London addressing the issues of 'Nationality and Investment Treaty Claims' and 'Fair and Equitable Treatment in Investment Treaty Law'.

The first conference addressed a central issue in international law. Nationality sits at the heart of the debate over the rights and participation of private parties in international relations. In international investment law, nationality constitutes one of the central criteria defining the scope of application of international investment agreements such as the ICSID Convention or the several thousand bilateral investment treaties (BITs) and free trade agreements (FTAs). It is a very complex and sensitive topic as the debate following the 1970 International Court of Justice decision in Barcelona Traction amply demonstrates. Topics addressed at the conference include the issue of nationality of physical and legal persons, the requirements for substantive and continuous nationality, as well as the issue of nationality in derivative actions and indirect claims.

The second conference dealt with potentially the most important and elusive obligation imposed on States by international investment treaties: the fair and equitable treatment standard. The elements that are usually cited by the case law and by legal scholars in the attempt to describe the meaning of the fair and equitable treatment standard include very broad concepts that are open to differing interpretations depending fundamentally on the perceived objectives of the international investment system. Among the topics addressed at the conference were the application of the fair and equitable treatment standard in customary international law and in investment treaty practice; equivalent standards under domestic administrative law; the relationship between the fair and equitable standard and expropriation; and the relevance of the conduct of the investor in determining a breach of the fair and equitable treatment standard.

This publication records the presentations given by several very distinguished experts in the field as well as the ensuing debate on these interesting and complex topics. The Investment Treaty Forum will continue to explore these topics and the underlying issues through its discussions and research.

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The Influence of the French Civil Code on the Common Law and Beyond

Duncan Fairgrieve
Published: August 2007

On the occasion of the recent bicentenary of the French Civil Code in 2004, this book reassesses the influence of this essential element of European private law. Contributions by distinguished jurists from the judiciary and academia examine the current role of the Civil Code within the French system, as well as its impact beyond the borders of France in other countries in Europe and beyond. Particular examination is made of the influence of the Napoleonic Code within Common Law countries. Authoritative contributions in both English and French offer theoretical and practical perspectives from both common law and civil law jurisdictions.

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The Age of Rebuilding: Sketches of the New Italian Private Law

Guido Alpa
Published: July 2007

Italian private law is undergoing a complex and fascinating process of evolution. Its Roman and French roots and the legacy of the codification age are now merged with EC Law, and with other sources of law, like case law, and even with the results of commercial practice.

This book is divided into five parts. The first is devoted to the resolution of some of the most important and difficult problems in private law: the definition of personal injury and the application of various methods of calculation of damages; the hypotheses of strict liability in tort; environmental damage; freedom of contract; and the results of the application of the EC Directive on unfair clauses in consumer contracts. The second looks at commercial law, considering consumers' interests; financial services (and the Parmalat case); competition and fair trade; mergers; and the transparency of banking contracts. The legal profession, as now regulated in Italy, is the subject developed in Part III. The book ends (Parts IV and V) with reviews of some relevant contributions of English jurists to the discussion of the present needs of legal systems in Europe and with an essay on the new aspects (and meanings) of legal certainty.

Legal systems in Europe are now converging, and the acquis communautaire is helping this process. Legal cultures are merging too; legislators and judges can profit from foreign experiences when they try to achieve a satisfactory balancing of conflicting interests. the needs of a general codification are now challenged; it is necessary to 'rebuild' the old machine of the law, taking into account the living sources emerging within society. In Italy as well as in Europe at large, soft law is now replacing hard law.

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WTO Law and Process: Proceedings of the 2005 and 2006 Annual WTO Conferences

Federico Ortino, Sergey Ripinsky
Published: May 2007

Each year in May, leading academics, national and international policy-makers, judges, legal practitioners and NGO representatives gather in London to discuss topical issues of the world trading system. London's Annual WTO conference, organized jointly by the British Institute of International and Comparative Law and the Institute of International Economic Law at Georgetown University Law Center, has grown into the most important annual event of its kind in the field.

This book collects the presentations and discussions at the last two Annual WTO Conferences in 2005 and 2006. Each conference addressed a broad range of topics relating to the WTO dispute settlement system (such as treaty interpretation, the Appellate Body's role in public international law, the relevance of non-trade interests and values, challenges of compliance, the principle of judicial economy) as well as broader institutional and constitutional issues facing the WTO (such as the impact of WTO disputes on the Doha negotiations, the relationship between trade and investment disputes and the role of the WTO in regulatory convergence).

This publication seeks to preserve the abundance of insights and ideas that were shared by very distinguished experts in the field as well as recording the ensuing debate on these interesting and complex topics.

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Antarctica: Legal and Environmental Challenges for the Future

Gillian Triggs, Anna Riddell
Published: April 2007

Since its inception almost 50 years ago, the Antarctic Treaty System has evolved to provide a stable and remarkably effective regime for management of the coldest, driest and windiest continent on earth. New challenges to this legal regime are now posed by contemporary problems such as climate change, tourism, and fishing and whaling in the Southern Ocean. For State Parties to the web of treaties that make up the Antarctic system of governance, the 21st century brings new demands for environmental protection while ensuring reasonable access for scientists and tourists alike. The papers in this collection were presented at a conference organized by the British Institute of International and Comparative Law and the United Kingdom's Foreign and Commonwealth Office to coincide with the Twenty-Ninth Meeting of the Antarctic Treaty Consultative Parties held in Edinburgh in June 2006. The authors, experienced Antarctic 'watchers', discuss their views on:

• 'Illegal, unreported and unregulated' fishing
  
• Vessel-based pollution
  
• Navigation through ice-covered waters
  
• Antarctic Treaty Secretariat
  
• Liability of operators and their States for environmental damage
  
• Tourism

Included with these scholarly papers are all the international agreements that make up the Antarctic Treaty System along with the Measures, Decisions and Resolutions of the Twenty-Ninth Consultative Party Meeting and the Edinburgh Declaration supporting the scientific research of the forthcoming International Polar Year starting in March 2007.

The collection provides an accessible analysis of the legal and environmental issues for Antarctica in the first decade of the 21st century for government officials and advisors, scholars, students, legal practitioners and scientists.

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