Legal Studies Research Paper Series Vol. 7, No. 8

The Faculty has published Volume 7 Number 8 of the University of Cambridge Faculty of Law Legal Studies Research Paper Series on SSRN.

This issue includes the following articles:

Gregory Shaffer & Michael Waibel: The Rise and Fall of Trade and Monetary Legal Orders: From the Interwar Period to Today’s Global Imbalances (28/2016)

This book chapter compares the International Monetary and Trade Legal Orders during the inter-war period and the post-cold war period. During the period between the two world wars, the protectionist legacy of the World War I in the form of trade and financial restrictions persisted. National policymakers, several international conferences and the League of Nations failed to prevent the world economy’s monetary disintegration. Multilateral coordination of monetary and exchange rate policy unraveled. This book chapter compares the monetary orders in the interwar period and today, and examines the risk that the current monetary system will suffer a similar fate to multilateral attempts at coordinating macroeconomic policy and crisis resolution triggered by global imbalances as during the interwar period.

Asif Hameed: The Monarchy and Politics (29/2016)

There is a tension in the British constitution concerning the role of the monarchy in political affairs. On the one hand, the monarch is expected to be politically neutral. On the other hand, the monarch is entitled to be politically active; she is permitted to express her political opinions in confidence to the elected government. Can this tension be resolved? Should it be resolved? This essay will explore both of these questions.

Andrew Sanger: State Immunity and the Right of Access to a Court Under the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights (31/2016)

This article examines the application of the right of access to a court as guaranteed by Article 47 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights in cases involving State immunity. First, it considers the scope of the right of access to a court under the Charter, including its relationship with Article 6(1) of the European Convention on Human Rights, and the ways in which the Charter is given effect within UK law. Second, the article critically examines the Court of Appeal’s application of both Article 6(1) ECHR and Article 47 of the EU Charter in Benkharbouche v Sudan, a case brought by domestic service staff of foreign embassies based in London against Sudan and Libya respectively. It argues that the Court’s statement that the right of access to a court is not engaged in immunity cases because the court has no jurisdiction to exercise – an analysis which relies on Lord Millett’s reasoning in Holland v Lampen-Wolfe and the dicta of Lords Bingham and Hoffmann in Jones v Saudi Arabia – is erroneousness: the right of access to a court is always engaged in immunity cases because immunity does not deprive the courts of jurisdiction ab initio. The article also argues that contrary to the Court’s reasoning on Article 47 of the EU Charter, the right of access to a court does not need to have horizontal effect in a private between private parties: the right is always enforced against the forum State; it has indirect, not horizontal, effect.

Brian Sloan: Reversing Testamentary Dispositions in Favour of Informal Carers (33/2016)

This chapter begins by considering the context of testamentary gifts for informal carers and the range of possible challenges to them. It then focuses on the appropriateness and the efficacy of the testamentary undue influence doctrine as a means of reversing testamentary dispositions in favour of informal carers. In particular, it considers the relevance of informal care to normative debates about whether a presumption of testamentary undue influence should be introduced to match the equivalent inter vivos presumption.

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