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The Supreme Administrative Court of Bulgaria’s final decision in the Pancharevo case: Bulgaria is not obliged to issue identity documents for baby S.D.K.A. as she is not Bulgarian (but presumably Spanish)
This post was written bij Helga Luku, PhD researcher at the University of Antwerp.
On 1 March 2023, the Supreme Administrative Court of the Republic of Bulgaria issued its final decision no. 2185, 01.03.2023 (see here an English translation by Nadia Rusinova) in the Pancharevo case. After an appeal from the mayor of the Pancharevo district, the Supreme Administrative Court of Bulgaria ruled that the decision of the court of first instance, following the judgment of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in this case, is “valid and admissible, but incorrect”. It stated that the child is not Bulgarian due to the lack of maternal ties between the child and the Bulgarian mother, and thus there is no obligation for the Bulgarian authorities to issue a birth certificate. Hereafter, I will examine the legal reasoning behind its ruling.
UK Supreme Court in Jalla v Shell: the claim in Bonga spill is time barred
The UK Supreme Court ruled that the cause of action in the aftermath of the 2011 Bonga offshore oil spill accrued at the moment when the oil reached the shore. This was a one-off event and not a continuing nuisance. The Nigerian landowners’ claim against Shell was thus barred by the limitation periods under applicable Nigerian law (Jalla and another v Shell International Trading and Shipping Company and another [2023] UKSC 16, on appeal from [2021] EWCA Civ 63).
On 10 May 2023, the UK Supreme Court has ruled in one of the cases in the series of legal battles started against Shell in the English courts in the aftermath of the Bonga spill. The relevant facts are summarized by the UK Supreme Court as follows at [6] and [7]:
Data on Choice-of-Court Clause Enforcement in US
The United States legal system is immensely complex. There are state courts and federal courts, state statutes and federal statutes, state common law and federal common law. When I imagine a foreign lawyer trying to explain this system to a foreign client, my heart fills with pity.
This feeling of pity is compounded when I imagine this same lawyer trying to advise her client as to whether a choice-of-court clause will be enforced by a court in the United States. The law on this subject is complicated. It is, moreover, not easy to determine how it is applied in practice. Are there differences in clause enforcement rates across the states? Across federal circuits? Do state courts enforce these clauses at the same rate as federal courts? Until recently, there was no data that would allow a foreign lawyer – or a U.S. lawyer, for that matter – to answer any of these questions.
Over the past several years, I have authored or co-authored several empirical articles that seek to answer the questions posed above. This post provides a summary of the data gathered for these articles. All of the cases referenced involve outbound choice-of-court clauses, i.e. clauses that select a jurisdiction other than the one where the suit was filed. Readers interested in the data collection process, the caveats to which the data is subject, or other methodological issues should consult the articles and their appendices. This post first describes state court practice. It then describes federal court practice. It concludes with a brief discussion comparing the two.
News
Virtual Workshop (in English) on May 14: Roxana Banu on Constructing Imperial Authority through British Imperial Constitutional Law and Private International Law
On Tuesday, May 14, 2024, the Hamburg Max Planck Institute will host its 44th monthly virtual workshop Current Research in Private International Law at 11:00-12:30 (CEST). Roxana Banu (University of Oxford) will speak, in English, about the topic
Constructing Imperial Authority through British Imperial Constitutional Law and Private International Law
Historians of the British Empire have long underscored the significance of constitutionalism and of legal pluralism in crafting and sustaining imperial authority. Constitutional law scholars, though to a lesser extent, have also been preoccupied with tracing the imperial history of constitutionalism in the colonies and the metropole. Legal historians and constitutional law scholars have offered us a fascinating array of perspectives on the way in which British imperial constitutional law promised both liberty and control throughout the empire and experimented with constitutional autonomy for the white settler colonies while tightening control for the rest of the empire. But this melange of unequally distributed patterns of authority and the constant recalibration of autonomy and control for different parts of the empire depended on the principles and doctrines of yet another field, which has remained remarkably silent on its imperial past, namely private international law. Unlike in constitutional law and even public international law, there is virtually no account of the colonial history of private international law. In this paper I start to trace that history with an analysis of the way in which key doctrinal principles of private international law, such as comity, territoriality, and the public policy exception were referenced either as alternatives to, or counterparts of, key imperial constitutional law principles of representative government, territoriality, and repugnancy. Imperial actors would appeal to one or another image of imperial authority constructed by either imperial constitutional law or private international law to gain more autonomy or to tighten imperial control. Far from being a relic of the past, the significance of this history can be traced, I argue, in contemporary cases on comity, forum non conveniens, and territoriality.
The presentation will be followed by an open discussion. All are welcome. More information and sign-up here.
If you want to be invited to these events in the future, please write to veranstaltungen@mpipriv.de.
British Academy International Writing Workshops: Access to Justice in Southeast Asia
Georgia Antonopoulou (University of Birmingham)
From 24 to 26 September 2024, the International Writing Workshop ‘Reimagining Access to Justice: An Equitable Research Partnership with Southeast Asia’ will take place in Jakarta, Indonesia. The writing workshop will focus on the theme of access to civil justice in Southeast Asia and is funded by the British Academy’s International Writing Workshops Programme. It will be organised under three sub-themes: (1) Barriers to Access to Justice, (2) Digital Technologies in Civil Justice, and (3) Access to Justice and Sustainable Development. Senior scholars with specialisation in the relevant workshop themes and editorial experience with leading journals will offer detailed, hands-on feedback on participants’ draft articles and give presentations on effective academic writing and publishing practices. The workshops will cover reasonable costs of travel, accommodation, and meals for the selected participants.
Applications: We invite submissions from researchers and academics, especially at their early stages of their careers, from Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Cambodia, and Vietnam. Applications should be in English and emailed to the PI Dr G. Antonopoulou, Birmingham Law School, the University of Birmingham (g.antonopoulou@bham.ac.uk). They should include:
- an abstract (max. 200 words);
- a draft article (max. 5,000 words);
- a Curriculum Vitae (max. 2 pages long); and
- a brief statement of motivation (max. 600 words).
The deadline for submission is the 15 July 2024.
During the writing workshop, the selected participants will give a presentation of their articles and then receive feedback from senior scholars with editorial experience to improve and publish their articles. In June 2025, a follow-up writing workshop will take place to monitor improvement. During the second writing workshop, training on writing funding applications will also be provided. The Call for Papers is also available here.
We particularly welcome applications from underrepresented groups. The University of Birmingham’s Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion policy can be found here. While attendance in person is required for the first writing workshop, the option of online attendance can be offered upon request during the second workshop. Special consideration will be given to female participants vested with childcare and/or other domestic responsibilities. Interested applicants are encouraged to include in their statement of motivation any necessary reasonable adjustments to facilitate their meaningful participation in the workshops.
We are looking forward to receiving your applications!