The concept of state immunity connotes that a state does not fall under the jurisdiction of foreign courts (immunity from jurisdiction) and that its property located in foreign territory is not subject to attachment and execution (immunity from execution). Thus, state immunity has a twofold nature: immunity ratione personae, in so far as a foreign state is involved, and immunity ratione materiae where foreign state property is at stake.

This article deals with attitudes in the United Kingdom to the attachment or execution of State property pursuant to a judicial ruling by a Court. It is divided into two parts: the first covers the attitude and practice of the United Kingdom with regard to the attachment or execution of foreign state property within the former's jurisdiction. The second comments on the attitude and practice of the United Kingdom Government to attachment or execution of its property located within the jurisdiction of foreign states.

International customary law on state immunity like all other international customary law is adopted into the domestic law of the Federal Republic of Germany in virtue of Article 25 of the Basic Law of the Federal Republic of Germany: “The general rules of international law shall form part of federal law. They shall take precedence over the laws and create rights and duties directly for the inhabitants of the federal territory”.

Of all the issues of public international law, the position of foreign states in national courts is the one to which Belgian practice has made the most specific contribution.

There are several situations in which the problem of possible immunity of state property from execution pursuant to decisions of foreign authorities may emerge. This paper will consider these situations when the forum is Yugoslavia, since this might be expected to reveal the position taken in Yugoslav law.

Like all other international customary law, international customary law on state immunity is adopted into Austrian domestic law in virtue of Article 9 of the Austrian Federal Constitution, which reads: “The generally recognized rules of International Law are held to be component parts of the Federal Law”.

In papers dealing with sovereign immunity, states are quite often divided into those advocating the so-called absolute immunity, and those that plead for the so-called restrictive immunity. Here, the socialist states are usually classed among the supporters of the absolute theory.

There are very few cases in which India has been a party to litigation before foreign courts on the question of sovereign immunity.

Seldom has the law changed as dramatically in any country on a matter affecting international relations as has the law of the United States very recently on the subject of this yearbook: the immunity of foreign state property from attachment or execution. This change has been both procedural and substantive. The changing instrument has been a federal statute, the “Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of 1976” (Public Law 94–583, 94th Congress, 90 Stat. 2891), which took effect on 19 January 1977.

The situation in Thailand with regard to the subject under review is a matter of particular interest in many respects, and as such deserves close attention. To determine the extent to which a foreign state may claim that its property is immune from attachment or execution pursuant to a judicial order or ruling made by a court of law in Thailand, requires an examination of the relevant law and practice prevailing in that country on two basic questions, namely, sovereign immunity or exemption of foreign states from territorial jurisdiction and from execution in respect of their property, and the capacity of foreign states to sue and be sued before a Thai court.

At the present time there is no rule of law governing the question of immunity from jurisdiction and from execution in Switzerland. When the Federal Law on actions for debts and bankruptcy was being amended in 1949, the legislator had declined to legislate on this point.

The Soviet doctrine of foreign state immunity starts out from the principle that state sovereignty, the sovereign equality of states, underlies this rule of international law. Sovereignty is an indefeasible attribute of every state. It follows from the legal equality of states, and their mutual independence, that no state may wield power with regard to another state, its organs and its property.

Nigeria as a comparatively newly independent state has not developed extensive practice and case law in the area of immunity of foreign state owned property within the country. However, it is possible to glean from the existing laws and the attitude of the Nigerian government in disputes on this subject what may be generally regarded as the Nigerian practice in this field.

The Italian experience concerning the possibility of subjecting the property of foreign states to measures of execution, is of very considerable interest from a comparative point of view. Italy is, in fact, one of the few countries to have adopted, many years ago, legislative measures of a fairly detailed and original nature to regulate this issue (contained in the Executive Order of 30 August 1925 n. 1621 which was subsequently enacted (with various amendments) as the Law of 15 July 1926 n. 1263). This Law is of interest, on the one hand, because of the insights which it gives into the approach which Italy has chosen to adopt in the interpretation of the content of the rules of international law governing the immunity of foreign states from measures of execution (and jurisdiction); and, on the other hand, because it is designed in such a way as to free the Italian judiciary from the need to venture into the quicksands of the principles of international law governing this subject; its ultimate aim, in fact, is to transfer from the judiciary to the Government the responsibility of deciding whether measures of execution against the property of foreign states should be allowed or not.

The aim of this paper is to summarize the attitude and practice of Japan with regard to the immunity of the property of foreign states. However, the number of cases of this kind in Japan is rather limited. Generally, the attitude or practice of a state can be determined by examining the practice of its legislature, judiciary and executive. In the case of Japan, however, there are no special laws or regulations concerning the question of execution against property owned by a foreign state. Furthermore, no official views have been stated by the executive on the immunity of a foreign state from Japanese jurisdiction. Therefore, the principal source of Japanese practice concerning state immunity is constituted by court decisions. It is possible to learn much about the position of the Japanese Government through analogies drawn from these cases, and from foreign cases in which Japan has been the defendant. Some treaty provisions concluded by Japan concerning the jurisdictional immunity of state property will also be mentioned.

In the Netherlands, the law of state immunity form execution covers an area where statutory provisions are scarce, where the judiciary has only sporadically entered and which has largely been neglected by scholarly opinion. So, when it comes to rendering an account of Dutch law concerning state immunity from execution, there is very little to draw upon. Even the notions of execution and of state immunity appearing in the title of this paper lack so much clarity that starting from a definition of these notions would hardly serve to project a clear image of what the law of state immunity from execution amounts to in the Netherlands.