This article explores the case law of the European Court of Human Rights, the European Court of Justice and the US Supreme Court on the fundamental rights of commercial companies. The rights considered include property, the privilege against self-incrimination, freedom of speech, double jeopardy, the right to make political donations, and the freedom of religion. The article highlights the dangers of taking the fundamental rights of companies too far, as has recently occurred in the US; and it advocates a cautious and coordinated approach to this delicate issue, which has become increasingly important on both sides of the Atlantic.

Global laws are an important inspiration for commercial law reforms around the world. Much analysis of this phenomenon emphasizes the capacity of regulatory élites, such as lawmakers, courts and lawyers, to adapt global laws to local conditions. What is often absent from this top-down analysis is a wide-ranging consideration of what the regulated think about global laws. This article aims to redress this shortcoming in the comparative literature by drawing fresh perspectives from bottom-up responses to global laws. It takes from socio-legal scholarship a framework for analysing the interface between thought formation and social action and explores the question—how do the regulated conceptualize and localize global laws? If compliance is socially constructed from below, as this literature suggests, then attempts to understand legal globalization by focusing exclusively on regulatory élites misses much of the localization story.

On 29 August 2013, the UK government published a memorandum setting out its ‘position regarding the legality of military action in Syria following the chemical weapons attack in Eastern Damascus on 21 August 2013’. While other States had contemplated some form of military action, most notably the US, none had been as clear and candid as to the legal basis upon which this would be launched. It might seem in this respect perhaps a little surprising that the UK decided in its relatively brief opinion that ‘the legal basis for military action would be humanitarian intervention’. As this article will attempt to highlight, this basic justification is far from uncontroversial. This short article will seek to be clear as to what the UK's legal position exactly was, whether and how this position can be reconciled with the lex lata governing the use of force for humanitarian purposes and its immediate impact upon it, and finally offer some reflections upon the contribution the opinion and its central legal argument has made to future legal argumentation in this area.

The 1951 Refugee Convention does not apply to a person with respect to whom there are serious reasons for considering that ‘he has been guilty of acts contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations’ (Article 1(F)(c)). To date, this exclusion clause has generally been interpreted by courts, commentators and UNHCR in a static manner which fails to take into account developments in international law and practice. This paper considers the ‘evolutive approach’ to treaty interpretation, generally, and applies this approach, alongside standard rules of treaty interpretation, to Article 1(F)(c). This paper challenges a number of assertions commonly made regarding this clause, and concludes that it should be interpreted to the effect that conduct amounting to serious or sustained human rights violations, such that would constitute ‘persecution’ for the purposes of Article 1(A)(2) of the Convention, meets the standard for exclusion under Article 1(F)(c).

The UN Security Council's practice of targeted sanctions has resulted in serious limitations on the enjoyment of targeted individuals' human rights. The European Court of Human Rights pronounced on this issue in two instances. In the cases of Nada (Grand Chamber judgment) and al-Dulimi (Chamber judgment) the Court was asked to evaluate the lawfulness of the domestic implementation of sanction measures against the ECHR. Surprisingly, each Chamber opted for a different solution. The present article will discuss these solutions and evaluate them within the broader framework of international law, the Court's jurisprudence, and the conflicting interests involved.

In its eagerly awaited judgment in Gazprom, the CJEU declined to follow the Opinion of Advocate General Wathelet that West Tankers is no longer good law. The West Tankers case decided that the courts of one Member State are precluded from granting antisuit injunctions directed at proceedings in the courts of another Member State, even if the proceedings in which the injunction is granted fall outside the scope of the Brussels Regulation by reason of the fact that they are concerned with arbitration. The Gazprom case confirms that West Tankers is still good law.

On 19 February 2013, a Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA)-administered Court of Arbitration issued a Partial Award on the dispute between Pakistan and India regarding the use of the waters of the Kishenganga/Neelum, a tributary of the Indus system of rivers. This article examines the tribunal's decision, which was mainly limited to interpreting the 1960 Indus Water Treaty (IWT), and its contribution to international environmental law and the law of non-navigational uses of international watercourses. After briefly discussing the dispute's factual context and procedural history, the article critiques the tribunal's methodology, which was based on an inconsistent application of the principles of treaty interpretation. The Award's contribution is therefore mixed: despite its almost complete disregard for the principle of ‘equality of right’, it has contributed to clarifying the criteria for determining ‘existing uses’ of a watercourse and reaffirmed both the substantive obligation to refrain from causing transboundary harm and the procedural duty to carry out an Environmental Impact Assessment under international environmental law.

The Recast of the Brussels I Regulation (1215/2012/EC) reforms EU law on jurisdiction in civil and commercial matters and includes long-awaited changes designed to prevent the use of the abusive tactic known as the Italian Torpedo to frustrate choice-of-court agreements. The new rules give priority in determining jurisdiction to a court designated by a prima facie valid agreement, even if litigation underway elsewhere was first in time. While this development has been broadly welcomed, it is unclear if the Recast's solution applies to related actions underway in other states as well as identical actions. Using a recent case from the Irish Supreme Court, in this article, we highlight that this possible omission could create significant problems, and calls into question the comprehensiveness of the Recast's solution to the problem of the Italian Torpedo.

In the wake of recent catastrophic natural disasters, the United Nations (UN) has developed an increasingly sophisticated network of collaborative partnerships to assist with humanitarian relief operations. The growing use of open-source technology such as crowd mapping and resource tracking—being universally accessible, collaboratively designed, subject to ongoing improvement, and responsive to on-the-ground needs—reflects in many respects the emerging UN governance mechanisms developed to support the creation of such technology. The 2008 meeting of the World Economic Forum called for increased documentation and ‘dissemination of the work of humanitarian relief’ and ‘mapping of assets, non-food items’ and resources to prevent duplication.1 However, as yet, little attention has been given to the role of open-source governance mechanisms in the context of disaster response. This article aims to fill this gap by examining the emerging mechanisms by which private sector collaboration is coordinated by international institutions such as the UN. It finds that the emergence of post-disaster open-source humanitarian relief reflects the observations of new governance legal scholars that coordination is increasingly the result of expanded participation and partnership on the part of governments and non-State actors, a learning-focused orientation, with the State increasingly acting as a convener, catalyst and coordinator.

The idea of investment treaty arbitration as public law is in tension with the concept of international law as a law between representative public agencies. This concept of international law is valuable for its capacity to progress a broad range of public policy aims in an integrated and coordinated manner, including aims extending beyond the economic sphere such as international social, environmental, cultural and related aims. The probable effect on this concept of international law of a radical ‘internationalized public law’ approach to investment treaty arbitration requires further thought, especially with regard to the potential implications of recognizing investor rights under international law.

This article offers a systematic analysis of the plenary Chamber of the French Cour de Cassation's final decision in the Baby Loup case which held that a private nursery had acted lawfully when requiring an employee to remove her jilbab at work, in accordance with the religious neutrality requirements of the nursery's policy. The article examines the decision in light of ECHR and French domestic legal requirements. First, it is argued that laïcité—rightly held to be irrelevant—still unduly taints the reasoning. As a result, proportionality and anti-discrimination provisions are not properly applied. Secondly, the decision is compared and contrasted with recent ECtHR cases, notably Eweida and Others v UK. It is argued that a Baby Loup-type restriction does not meet ECHR standards. Additionally the margin of appreciation, used by the ECtHR to save the French ban on the full-covering of the face in the SAS case, should not, as will be demonstrated, come into play in a Baby Loup context.