Jurisdictional Competition: Selected Cases in International and European Law

Jurisdictional competition is a relatively new but increasingly important phenomenon in European and international law. The ongoing proliferation of various international courts and tribunals results in a multiplication of judgments and arbitral awards, which potentially conflict with each other. Moreover, the ever expanding exclusive jurisdiction of the ECJ into international law issues further exacerbates and complicates the problem by mixing European law principles into international law.The selected cases examined in this book, which cover different areas of international and European law, illustrate the methods applied by various international courts and tribunals to deal with overlapping jurisdictions. Since any formal hierarchy or coordination between the various international courts and tribunals is lacking, it is argued that only soft law methods, such as the application of comity, in particular the Solange-method, appears to be a useful tool to deal with the negative effects associated with jurisdictional competition. Dr. Nikolaos Lavranos (1971) has been Max Weber Fellow (2008-09) at the European University Institute (EUI) in Florence. Before he was Senior Researcher International law and Assistant Professor European law at the University of Amsterdam, Law Faculty. He is NWO VENI laureate (2005-09).He also worked as Senior Advisor (European & International Strategy) for the Board of the Dutch Competition Authority, The Hague.In 2004 he received his doctoral degree from Maastricht University for his dissertation Decisions of International Organizations in the European and Domestic Legal orders of selected EU Member States. In the same year the dissertation has been published by Europa Law Publishing under the title Legal interaction between decisions of International Organizations and European law. Moreover, he has published widely on various topics of European and international law and their interaction.