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"Preface" [2015] ELECD 1191; in Orakhelashvili, Alexander (ed), "Research Handbook on Jurisdiction and Immunities in International Law" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2015) ix

Book Title: Research Handbook on Jurisdiction and Immunities in International Law

Editor(s): Orakhelashvili, Alexander

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781783472178

Section Title: Preface

Number of pages: 4

Extract:

Preface


It is the basic truth that the assertion of, or the refusal to exercise state
jurisdiction, for whatever reasons, is a matter of the domestic law of the
state in the first place. However, the ultimate framework of the legality of
national jurisdictions rests with the system of public international law
which independently, and through the network of customary and conven-
tional rules, suggests the criteria for the initial basis and ultimate legality
of national jurisdictions, as well as determines the implications of the
improper exercise of, or the improper failure to assert, the national
jurisdiction. Much of the jurisdiction-related ground is a matter of private
international law too, but public international law is the ultimate govern-
ing framework. Therefore, this Research Handbook presents the issues of
state jurisdiction and state immunity from the overarching perspective of
public international law in the first place, though also encompassing
some issues of private international law and of national laws as they bear
on those issues.
Several themes have dominated the discourse on state jurisdiction over
the past two centuries. One issue is consular jurisdiction that European
states exercised in non-European parts of the world on the basis of
treaties concluded with non-European states and which extended, as
Oppenheim described it, both to the cases arising as between expatriates,
as well as to mixed cases involving native subjects (L. Oppenheim,
International Law (2nd edn, 1912), vol. I, p. 498). Though advancing
extra-territoriality, consular jurisdiction was essentially (in the ...