State Immunity in UK Law

Where a state is not directly or indirectly impleaded in the litigation, so that no issue of state immunity as such arises, the English and American courts have nonetheless, as a matter of judicial restraint, held themselves not competent to entertain litigation that turns on the validity of the public acts of a foreign state, applying what has become known as the act of state doctrine.

Article 6 requires contracting states to maintain fair and public judicial processes and forbids them to deny individuals access to those processes for the determination of their civil rights. It presupposes that the contracting states have the powers of adjudication necessary to resolve the issues in dispute. It is not a self-imposed restriction on the jurisdiction of its courts which the United Kingdom has chosen to adopt.

The conclusion which emerges is that in considering, under the "restrictive" theory whether state immunity should be granted or not, the court must consider the whole context in which the claim against the State is made, with a view to deciding whether the relevant act(s) upon which the claim is based, should, in that context, be considered as fairly within an area of activity, trading, or commercial, or otherwise of a private law character, in which the state has chosen to engage, or whether the relevant act(s) should be considered as having been done outside that area, and within the sphere of governmental or sovereign activity.

The central point is that restrictions on the right of access to court which reflect generally recognised rules of public international law cannot in principle be regarded as disproportionate. The court added that this is so even if international practice as to the meaning or scope of an international obligation is inconsistent, provided that the interpretation applied by the state in question is reasonable and falls within currently accepted international standards.

It is a form of immunity ratione materiae, closely connected with analogous doctrines of sovereign immunity and, although a domestic doctrine of English (and American) law, is founded on analogous concepts of international law, both public and private, and of the comity of nations.

The foreign state's right to immunity cannot be circumvented by suing its servants or agents. It is further provided, in article 6(2)(b), that "A proceeding before a court of a State shall be considered to have been instituted against another State if that other State … (b) is not named as a party to the proceeding but the proceeding in effect seeks to affect the property, rights, interests or activities of that other State".

But the same approach cannot be adopted in international law, which is based upon the common consent of nations. It is not for a national court to "develop" international law by unilaterally adopting a version of that law which, however desirable, forward-looking and reflective of values it may be, is simply not accepted by other states. (See Al-Adsani 34 EHRR 273, 297, para O-II9 in the concurring opinion of judges Pellonpää and Bratza).