Conflict of laws

Section 31 of the Civil Jurisdictions and Judgments Act 1982 was the means by which the UK’s legislator achieved, for the first time, a comprehensive and coherent treatment of the issue of state immunity in respect of foreign judgments. Adopting a narrow interpretation, the drafters of the State Immunity Act 1978 or Parliament had not contemplated that s 3(1)(a) of that Act had in mind that it would or should apply to a foreign judgment against a foreign state.

Section 31 of the 1982 Act provided comprehensively for the recognition and enforcement of the foreign judgments to which it applied. A foreign judgment against a state would be capable of enforcement in England if both of the following conditions were fulfilled: first, that the foreign court would have had jurisdiction if it had applied the UK rules on sovereign immunity set out in ss 2 to 11 of the 1978 Act, the effect of which was that a state was