Public International Law Notes

Advocate General finds that CETA's "Investment Court System" is compatible with EU law

CJEU upholds opinion of Advocate General and rules that UK can unilaterally cancel Brexit by revoking Article 50

In a landmark decision delivered on an accelerated timetable, the Court of Justice of the European Union ("CJEU") has ruled that a Member State can …

English Court rejects Ukraine’s attempt to set aside enforcement order on grounds of state immunity

The English Court (the "Court") has dismissed an application by Ukraine to set aside a court order permitting Russian investor, PAO Tatneft, to enforce …

English Court finds that the foreign act of state doctrine may apply to arbitration proceedings

In the decision of Reliance Industries Limited & Ors v The Union of India [2018] EWHC 822 (Comm) the English Commercial Court (the Court) considered …

Dawood Rawat v Mauritius: Dual-national claim dismissed based on treaty context interpretation

  On 6 April 2018, a Tribunal constituted under the UNCITRAL Arbitration Rules rendered an Award on Jurisdiction in the case Dawood Rawat v. The …

Update on the future of ISDS: the discussions within UNCITRAL Working Group III – no apparent consensus to date

After a number of years of public debate in a variety of fora, the discussion of the future development of investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) has …

EU Council publishes Negotiating Directives for Convention establishing a Multilateral Investment Court: no real surprises but a couple of gaps

On 20 March, 2018 the Council of the European Union published negotiating directives dated 1 March 2018 authorizing the European Commission to negotiate …

State-to-State Dispute Settlement under the EU's latest draft of the Withdrawal Agreement: CJEU jurisdiction remains

On 15 March 2018 the European Commission published a revised version of the draft Withdrawal Agreement between the EU and the UK previously published on …

State-to-State dispute settlement under the EU's draft Withdrawal Agreement: CJEU jurisdiction not arbitration

We have known for some time now that the UK and EU have very different views regarding the state-to-state dispute resolution mechanism to be contained in …

UK Supreme Court confirms the limited scope of state and diplomatic immunity from employment claims: Benkharbouche and Reyes

In two judgments handed down on 18 October 2017, the Supreme Court (the "Court") has allowed certain employment claims made by foreign nationals employed …

UK Government's Future Partnership Paper on Foreign policy, defence and development: including proposals for co-operation on sanctions, cyber security, and the defence and security industries

The UK Government has released a Paper outlining the UK’s proposals for a future partnership with the EU regarding foreign policy, defence and …

Enforcement and dispute resolution under the Withdrawal Agreement and any future relationship agreement: no role for the CJEU….or is there?

On its face, the thrust of the UK Government's Future Partnership Paper on Enforcement and Dispute Resolution (the Paper), published on 23 August, is to …