As is the case with many “specialist” areas of law, the boundaries of aviation law are ill-defined. Many of the core legal concepts are derived from more general fields of law (some being adapted from maritime law) and the approach taken to the subject is very susceptible to individual variation or preference. As regards the legal arrangements for international aviation, however, there is a much greater degree of uniformity than in many areas of law, both for reasons of necessity and given the opportunity afforded by the relatively recent development of the system. Thus, one major division in approaches to aviation law is between those who take a national system as their angle of attack and those who adopt an international law approach. The latter is perhaps particularly appropriate in the case of aviation law because so much of national law is derived from provisions in the international arrangements, or even more specifically based on detailed international codes such as the Warsaw Convention system or some of the Annexes to the Chicago Convention on International Civil Aviation 1944.

The present book is essentially an English law approach to aviation law, even though its structure and its allusions to the international arrangements do not make this immediately apparent. Divided into four unequal sections, the opening bird’s eye view of institutional structure devotes as much attention to developments in the European Community as to the broader international framework for aviation. While this may be forward-looking, it is very much at the expense of any explanation of the very extensive system of treaty regulation of air transport or of a real explanation of the regulatory system of the Chicago Convention. The two central and much longer parts of the book track through the United Kingdom legislation on airline operation and liability. Though in both cases there is some reference to the international background, this is not really worked through or fully integrated into an account of the law.

Perhaps a key question is the extent to which international obligations are seen as a legal context for understanding air law. As indicated above, some of the more detailed regulation of international civil aviation is to be found in the standards and recommended practices in the Annexes to the Chicago Convention mentioned above. What legal obligation do states have to implement these standards in their national systems of law? The answer is not simple because obligations arise obliquely through the Convention provisions requiring states to notify individual differences from prescribed standards, such differences being published by the International Civil Aviation Organization (“ICAO”) with the Annexes to the Convention. In brief, however, standards in the Annexes, if not specifically rejected or modified, are tantamount to mandatory regulations. The importance of this (though it is only part of the picture) is that there is a considerable body of internationally prescribed law for civil aviation, much of which has been carried over into national law even for domestic flight in many instances. The present book makes several references to these standards and recommended practices but their legal effect is not investigated.

This may in part be explained by the very strange account of the status of ICAO which (quite correctly) refers to the capacity and personality envisaged by the Convention within the territory and law of each Contracting State, but goes on to refer to these provisions as:

This obscures the facts that the ICAO is an international organization, brought into rela-