Agrégateur de flux

Par un arrêt du 29 janvier 2020, la chambre criminelle est venue préciser les exigences de motivation de l’évaluation du préjudice de l’État dans une affaire de fraude fiscale et de blanchiment de ce délit et a rappelé celles applicables à la peine complémentaire de confiscation.

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Quelques mois après que la Cour de justice de l’Union européenne a précisé la portée de la directive OGM sur la mutagénèse, le Conseil d’État enjoint au gouvernement de modifier le code de l’environnement.

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Assurances (règles générales) – Prescription civile

For the fourth consecutive year, the Annual Conference of the Society of Legal Scholars (SLS) will feature a section dedicated to Conflict of Laws. This year’s iteration of the conference will take place from 1 to 4 September 2020 at the University of Exeter (more information here). The conveners of the Conflict of Laws section, Andrew Dickinson and Máire Ní Shúilleabháin, have kindly provided the following Call for Papers.

SLS Conflict of Laws Section: Call for Papers and Panels for 2020 SLS Annual Conference at the University of Exeter

This is a call for papers and panels for the Conflict of Laws section of the 2020 SLS Annual Conference to be held at the University of Exeter from Tuesday 1st  September – Friday 4th September. 

This marks the fourth year of the Conflict of Laws section, and we are hoping to build on the successful meetings in past years, most recently at the 2019 Conference in Preston. We would like to thank all those who have supported the section since its inception.

The Conflict of Laws section will meet in the second half of the conference on Thursday 3rd and Friday 4th September.

We intend that the section will comprise four sessions of 90 minutes, with 3 or more papers being presented in each session, followed by discussion. At least three of the sessions will be organised by theme. We hope, if submissions allow, to be able to set aside the fourth session for papers by early career researchers (within 5-years of PhD or equivalent). We also hope to organise a Conflict of Laws social event on the Thursday evening.

We welcome proposals from scholars in the field for papers or panels on any aspect of the Conflict of Laws (private international law). We welcome proposals representing a full range of intellectual perspectives in the subject section, and from those at all stages of their careers.

If you are interested in delivering a paper, we ask you to submit a proposed title and abstract of around 300 words. If you wish to propose a panel, please submit an outline of the theme and rationale for the panel and the names of the proposed speakers (who must have agreed to participate), together with their proposed titles and abstracts.

Please submit your paper abstract or panel details by 11:59pm UK time on Tuesday 24th March 2020.  All abstracts and panel details must be submitted through the Oxford Abstracts conference system which can be accessed using the following link – https://app.oxfordabstracts.com/stages/1763/submitter – and following the instructions (select ‘Track’ for the relevant Subject Section). If you registered for Oxford Abstracts for last year’s conference, please ensure that you use the same e-mail address this year if that address remains current. If you experience any issues in using Oxford Abstracts, please contact slsconference@mosaicevents.co.uk.

As the SLS is keen to ensure that as many speakers with good quality papers as possible are able to present, we discourage speakers from presenting more than one paper at the conference.  With this in mind, when you submit an abstract via Oxford Abstracts, you will be asked to note if you are also responding to calls for papers or panels from other sections. 

The SLS offers a Best Paper Prize which can be awarded to academics at any stage of their career and which is open to those presenting papers individually or within a panel.  The Prize carries a £250 monetary award and the winning paper will, subject to the usual process of review and publisher’s conditions, be published in Legal Studies.  To be eligible:

• speakers must be fully paid-up members of the SLS;
• papers must not exceed 12,000 words including footnotes (as counted in Word);
• papers must be uploaded to the paperbank (via Oxford Abstracts) by 11.59pm UK time on Monday 24th August; and
• papers must not have been published previously or have been accepted or be under consideration for publication.

We have also been asked to remind you that all speakers will need to book and pay to attend the conference and that they will need to register for the conference by Tuesday 16th June in order to secure their place within the programme. Please do let me/us know if this is likely to pose any problems for you. For further information, please see the conference website (https://www.slsconference.com/).

We note also that prospective speakers do not need to be members of the SLS or already signed up as members of a section to propose a paper.

We look forward to seeing you, as a speaker or delegate, at the Conflict of Laws session in Exeter.

With best wishes,

Professor Andrew Dickinson, St Catherine’s College, University of Oxford Dr Máire Ní Shúilleabháin, University College Dublin (Conveners)

As reported earlier in this blog, the Queen Mary University of London will host a series of workshops on Private International Law after Brexit.

The first workshop of the series, scheduled for 28 February 2020, is sold out. The second and third workshop will be held on 1 and 2 April 2020, and will focus on the future development of private international law in the UK in relation to commercial law and family law, respectively.

More on the events can be found here.

Gilbert Chikli, 54 ans, est connu pour ses escroqueries et ses talents d’acteur. Il est poursuivi, au côté de six autres prévenus, pour une escroquerie consistant à se faire passer pour le ministre de la défense pour extorquer des millions. Son procès, débuté le 4 novembre, prendra fin le 12 novembre.

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News broke a few weeks back on the class action suit introduced in the USDC for the District of Columbia, against Apple, Dell, Microsoft and Tesla. Swiss-based Glencore (of Mark Rich fame) and Belgium’s Umicore are mentioned in the suit but not added to the defendants. Historical references are inevitably made to the plundering of Congo first by King Leopold personally and in a later stage by the Kingdom of Belgium.

The suit is a strategic one, attempting to highlight the human rights (including child labour) issues involved in the mining of cobalt, used as a raw material in particular for modern batteries, and to propel the corporate social responsibility (CSR) debate on due diligence and supply-chain liability. It is also however a suit seeking damages for the victims of child labour in very dangerous circumstances.

Of note for the blog is the jurisdictional angle: discussed at 18 ff and featuring arguments against the use of forum non conveniens. Claimants put forward they have no practical ability to litigate in DRC: damages under DRC law (therefore assumed to be the lex causae which a Congolese judge would apply were the case litigated in DRC) sought from end-users of cobalt; DRC courts are corrupt; anyone standing in the way of the mining industry is threatened; the 2000 Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act TVPRA as amended in 2013 allows for extraterritorial jurisdiction; finally and of relevance to a classic locus delicti commissi argument: ‘the policymaking that facilitated the harms Plaintiffs suffered was the product of decisions made in the United States by Defendants’.

Personal jurisdiction is suggested to exist for (at 22) are all U.S. resident companies and they do substantial and continuous business within the District of Columbia – minimum contacts are established, and defendants should reasonably anticipate being hailed into court there.

No doubt there will be intense discussion on the jurisdictional basis, prior to debate on the merits of liability of end-users.

Geert.

Biens mal acquis : Teodorin Obiang, vice-président de Guinée équatoriale, condamné en appel à trois ans d’emprisonnement avec sursis et trente millions d’euros d’amende.

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Maria Caterina Baruffi (University of Verona) and Matteo Ortino (University of Verona) have edited the book «Trending topics in international and EU law: legal and economic perspectives». It collects the proceedings of the conference «#TILT Young Academic Colloquium», held in Verona on 23-24 May 2019 and organized by the Law Department of the University of Verona in collaboration with the Ph.D. School of Legal and Economic Studies and the European Documentation Centre.

The event fell within the activities of the research project «Trending International Law Topics – #TILT» supervised by Maria Caterina Baruffi and funded by the programme «Ricerca di base 2015» promoted by the University of Verona. It was specifically targeted to Ph.D. students and early career scholars, selected through a Call for Papers. The book publishes the results of their research with the aim of fostering the scientific debate on trending topics in international and EU law and their impact on domestic legal systems. 

The volume is divided into four parts, respectively devoted to public international law, including papers on human rights, international criminal law and investment law; private international law; EU law, addressing both general aspects and policies; and law and economics.

With specific regard to private international law (Part II of the volume), contributions deal with family, civil and commercial matters. For the former aspect, the volume collects papers on topics such as the EU Regulations on property relationships of international couples, recognition of adoptions, free movement of same-sex registered partners and cross-border surrogacy; for the latter, the volume includes contributions on topics such as choice-of-court agreements in the EU in the light of Brexit, insolvency, service of process and counter-claims in the Brussels regime.

More information about the book and the complete table of contents are available here.

Qisheng He, Professor of International Law at the Peking University Law School, and Director of the Peking University International Economical Law Institute, has published a survey on the Chinese practice in Private International Law in 2018. The full title of the article is the following: The Chronology of Practice: Chinese Practice in Private International Law in 2018.

The article has been published by the Chinese Journal of International Law, a journal published by Oxford University Press.  This is the 6th survey published by Prof. He on the topic.

Prof. He has prepared an abstract of his article, which goes as follows:

This survey contains materials reflecting the practice of Chinese private international law in 2018. First, the statistics of the foreign-related civil or commercial cases accepted and decided by Chinese courts is extracted from theReport on the Work of the Supreme People’s Court (SPC) in 2018. Second, some relevant SPC judicial interpretations including the SPC Provisions on Several Issues Regarding the Establishment of the International Commercial Court are introduced. The SPC Provisions on Several Issues concerning the Handling of Cases on the Enforcement of Arbitral Awards by the People’s Courts are translated, and the Provisions reflect a pro-arbitration tendency in Chinese courts. Third, regarding jurisdiction, a case involving the binding force of a choice of court clause under the transfer of contract is selected. Fourth, three typical cases, relating to the conflict of laws rules, are examined and deal with the matters such as personal injury on the high seas, visitation rights, as well as uncontested divorces. The case regarding personal injury on the high seas discusses the “extension of territory” theory, but its choice of law approach deviate from Chinese law. Fifth, two cases involving foreign judgments are cited: one analyses the probative force of a Japanese judgment as evidence used by the SPC, and the other recognises the judgment of a French commercial court. Sixth, the creation of a “one-stop” international commercial dispute resolution mechanism is discussed. This new dispute resolution mode efficiently coordinates mediation, arbitration and litigation. One mediation agreement approved by Chinese courts is selected to reflect this development. Finally, the paper also covers six representative decisions regarding the parties’ status, the presumption of the parties’ intention as to choice of law, and the validity of arbitration agreements.

I have earlier reviewed the decision of Chief Master Marsh in [2018] EWHC 550 (Ch) Wheat v Alphabet /Google Inc and Monaco Telecom. In Wheat v Google LLC [2020] EWHC 27 (Ch), this decision was confirmed upon appeal (on the copyright issues see here).

Google is involved in the litigation because claimant alleges that Google’s search engine algorithm has done little to address hotlinking practice, which, it is said, facilitates copyright infringement.

Both cases are a good example of the standards for serving out of jurisdiction, essentially, to what degree courts of the UK should accept jurisdiction against non-UK defendants (here: with claimants resident in the UK). The Brussels I Recast Regulation is not engaged in either cases for neither Monaco nor Alphabet are EU based. Mr Wheat is resident in England and his business is based in England. Any damage as a result of hotlinkers’ infringement of his copyright is very likely to be and to have been suffered in England; there is in fact evidence that damage has been suffered. It is also clear to Keyser J that England is clearly the appropriate forum and a forum non conveniens argument therefore going nowhere. However the case to answer by Google, like Marsh CM concluded, is simply too weak nay non-existant: following extensive review of secondary EU law and CJEU copyright law, Keyser J holds that the acts complained of against Google cannot be unlicensed communications, because they are not communications to a new public (all potential users of the unrestricted Website constituting one public, so far as concerns a case involving communication via hotlinking) and are not communications by a new technical means (the internet constituting a single technical means).

No case to answer by Google. No service out of jurisdiction.

Geert.