As Professor Fawcett makes plain in his Introduction, Sir Peter North has made a singular contribution to law and law reform, though it is his work on private international law rather than road traffic offences or the Northern Ireland parades commission which provides the basis for this collection of essays. As some of Sir Peter’s own papers on Private International Law were collected and published 10 years ago, the combination of two volumes published by the Press which he serves as a Delegate serves as a fitting memorial to a career as an academic lawyer. This collection shows how much he enjoys the esteem and affection of colleagues far from his familiar territory in Oxford; and taken together the essays offer a snapshot of the concerns of the conflict of laws at the start of a new century. While interesting and well written (or well edited, or both), the collection is distinctly varied and, in uncanny reflection of the state of the subject as a whole, not entirely certain where it is going.

Contributions which describe a time-slice in the process of law reform run the risk of having a short shelf-life. The negotiations which led to Council Regulation (EC) 44/2001, and the decidedly modest amendments made to the inherited text of the Brussels Convention, are interesting to read once, but are unlikely to enter the canon. Even augmented by an analysis of how old cases would be decided under these new rules, such papers, of which Professor Beaumont’s is a classic example, rapidly turn sepia. Something similar can be said of those (Professor McClean, and the late Dr Nygh) which dwell on or derive from the failing or failed project at the Hague. This had sought to produce a worldwide Convention on civil jurisdiction and judgments but, unless there is more to the truth than meets the eye, have utterly run out of steam. The two papers which deal with aspects of it convey a sense that so much work cannot be allowed to disappear without trace, and that something of academic worth should be salved from the wreckage. In some ways this is entirely appropriate for a Festschrift for a long-time member of law reform bodies: it must be a pervasive frustration and regret that proposals, in which numberless hours of effort may have been invested, are left to shrivel in the cold. It must take some fortitude to treat such disregarded projects as worthy of unnotice. But, even with the best will in the world, the accounts and derivatives of such unbuilt grand designs are unlikely to be studied with any great intensity.

More durable will be two accounts of common law development from beyond the seas. Professor Blom sets out in interesting detail the various ways in which the concept of forum conveniens has been used by the Canadian judiciary to fashion a highly individualistic theory of jurisdiction and judgment recognition (not to mention anti-suit relief); the account of choice of law reform in the field of tort, where forum conveniens has not provided the motive force is, perhaps, a little less thorough. And Professor Brand provides a useful account of choice of court agreements and their effectiveness in proceedings before American courts. Even so, one gets the impression that on this topic English law has moved rather further ahead: when it comes to their enforcement, there is no

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