Lloyd's Maritime and Commercial Law Quarterly
BOOK REVIEW - FOREIGN AFFAIRS IN ENGLISH COURTS
FOREIGN AFFAIRS IN ENGLISH COURTS by F. A. Mann, C.B.E., F.B.A., LL.D., D. Jur., Hon D. Jur., Solicitor, Honorary Professor of Law in the University of Bonn, Member of the Institut de Droit International, Honorary Member of the American Society of International Law, Clarendon Press, Oxford (1986, xxi and 190 pp., plus 5 pp. Index.) Hardback £25.
In this book, which is the first extended study of the procedures and techniques of the English courts in cases in which the foreign relations of the Crown are to some extent involved, that distinguished veteran scholar and practitioner Dr F. A. Mann devotes his attention to consideration of 10 topics which form the 10 chapters of the work. These are, the prerogative in foreign affairs, so-called “facts of state”, the effect of certification by the executive, treaties, including EEC treaties, customary international law, comity, public policy, foreign act of state and British act of state.
The author’s credentials for writing about these matters are undoubted, since he or the firm of solicitors of which he has long been a member have been involved in some of the leading cases in this field. Perhaps the most interesting and stimulating chapters are those on the prerogative, justiciability, comity and foreign act of state. It is impossible not to agree with most of Dr Mann’s criticisms and to sympathize with his occasional avowed mystification at the attitudes displayed and the arguments propounded by American and English judges. The present reviewer wholly sympathizes with the author’s strictures on British Air
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