Two tenets are central to the Common Law rules for enforcement and recognition of foreign judgments. The first is that, subject to public policy, the enforcing court does not review the substance of the decision; in other words, mistake is no defence. The second is that, apart from ensuring that the judgment was not obtained by fraud or through a breach of the requirements of natural justice, the prime consideration for enforcement is whether the foreign court was competent to issue the judgment; in other words, whether it had jurisdiction.

These two tenets are eminently reasonable. A foreign judgment is after all both a judgment—like a local judgment, and foreign—like a right acquired under a foreign law. The validity of local judgments and of foreign unadjudicated rights depends on jurisdiction: local judgments depend on adjudicatory jurisdiction (often defined in the rules of service); foreign rights—on legislative or prescriptive jurisdiction (the jurisdiction of a system to regulate the situation substantively, as defined in choice-of-law rules). It thus seems appropriate to require jurisdiction of foreign judgments too. Local judgments, once final, are never subject to review, and can be attacked on the grounds that they were obtained by fraud only exceptionally. Rights acquired under a foreign law cannot be refused enforcement because of their substance and are subject only to the public policy exception. It thus seems appropriate to immunise foreign judgments from substantive review too. Foreign judgments—adjudicated rights—are of course different from foreign unadjudicated rights in that they are the product of a process. So, as in the case of local judgments, it should nonetheless be possible, in limited circumstances, to examine whether the process was tainted by fraud. So too, they differ from local judgments in that the process from which they emerge is not a local one; it cannot be relied upon in the same way as locally controlled and institutionalised procedures. It thus seems reasonable that, while prevented from reviewing the substance of a foreign decision, the court should be permitted to require of it a minimal level of procedural justice.

Bertolt Brecht’s The Caucasian Chalk Circle introduces the character of Azdak—a corrupt, disrespectful menial clerk who on the heels of a coup d’état finds himself appointed judge, complete with judicial robe and a wicker flask for a hat. The circumstances of his appointment foretell the irony of his tenure. A military coup spoils a sunny Easter Sunday in the Caucasian town of Grusinia. The governor is beheaded; the municipal judge hanged. Yet the Grand Duke, oppressive ruler of Grusinia and surrounding territories, escapes, due in no small part to unknowing protection afforded by Azdak. When Azdak learns the next day that the fugitive he harbored over night was the Grand Duke, he heads straight for the courthouse, raging at himself through the streets, to turn himself in and submit to punishment. No judge presides over the courtroom, however, only a few bored soldiers who find Azdak amusing though somewhat crazed. In their amusement they decide to make him the new judge, declaring that the old judge (still hanging in the corner) “was always a rascal. Now the rascal shall be the Judge” (72).

On becoming judge, Azdak acts anything but honorably and respectfully toward the law. He sits on the statute book to give himself a more regal aire. He takes bribes; he derides and ridicules the parties appearing before him; he requires a female litigant to perform sexual acts; he does a preliminary assessment of the worth of each lawyer’s arguments by asking the amount of his fee. In short, Azdak judges arbitrarily, with bias and partiality. By play’s end, immediately following his final decrees, he flees out of concern for his life, never to be seen again.

When we think of recent armed conflicts, such as those in the Persian Gulf, Bosnia or Rwanda, we realize that one profound difficulty shared by them was how they ended. The process of war termination—of resolving successfully serious outbreaks of armed conflict between national groups—is fraught with fragility and complexity, featuring often competing claims of security and justice.

Only recently have we begun to understand how crucial the issue of war termination is, with regard not only to bringing particular conflicts to an end but also to mitigating further devastations in the future. Whereas past attention focused obsessively on the beginning of war, and/or on proper conduct during wartime, it is becoming clear that the ending of war deserves equal time with regard to critical analysis, historical application and the creative construction of proposals for amelioration. There are only a handful of works on this important and topical, yet neglected, issue.

This article proposes to contribute to the sparse literature by constructing a theory of war termination. The article will offer reasonable responses to questions of what constitutes justice, security and legality in the aftermath of war. The inquiry will proceed first by examining the status quo with regard to war termination, undertaking an examination of its few strengths and many weaknesses. Then, the account will fashion a more satisfactory set of laws to regulate state conduct during the immediate aftermath of a particular war. These universal and abstract norms, once constructed, will be applied to a recent and concrete case, namely, that of the lengthy termination process of the Persian Gulf War of 1991. The theory will next shift its attention away from short-term principles, regulating the endings of particular wars, towards those longer-term rules and institutional reforms required to transform the international system itself into one in which the incidence and destructiveness of war will be diminished. Before concluding, attention will be paid to defeating doubts about the laws forwarded as a plausible theory about securing justice and peace when wars end.

Alternative dispute resolution has the potential to be many things to many people, although it cannot, of course, be everything to everybody. A careful reflection on the appropriate role and scope of alternative dispute resolution will evidence that it has much to offer the legal profession and the legal system. For one thing, it can rejuvenate the practice of law for its practitioners, being both fun and fascinating. It can also help to improve the public perceptions of lawyers, which may be sinking to all time lows. One way of approaching the topic is to suggest that lawyers need alternative dispute resolution—they need it both to enhance their public image and in order to drum up new business opportunities. Another way of approaching the topic is to focus on the contribution of treatments of alternative dispute resolution to the “growth of the modern social scientific study of law.” Studies along these lines may emphasize the development of the Alternative Dispute Resolution movement in terms of attempts to “recast the market for dispute resolution services by different interests attempting to advance their own professional projects.”.

Yet a different way of examining alternative dispute resolution is to explore the self perceptions of its practitioners and theorists—what they think it has to offer to its consumers and society at large. Alternative dispute resolution certainly can provide a fertile source of ‘satisfaction’ to the parties to disputes. The “mediation alternative”, for instance, is said to provide a more complex form of ‘satisfaction’, one in which the needs and interests of the parties determine the final outcome. It is not only that there are some disputants—who currently are not aware of, or encouraged to pursue, opportunities to resolve their disputes by negotiation or mediation—who would benefit from access to ADR. It is also that even those who might fail to reach agreement if they tried negotiation or mediation would still benefit from the attempt and may be less likely to be disaffected or disappointed from the adjudicative outcome to their dispute having tried the “other way” beforehand. Perhaps even those who might decline to avail themselves of the option to try ADR even if offered would benefit just from having the choice. All disputants, therefore, benefit to some degree from the processes of ADR being readily available and carried out reliably and responsibly.

Judging the Judges, Judging Ourselves is an excellent book for at least three reasons. First, it is a critically engaged, firsthand account of a unique legal and political event: the inquiry by South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission into the operation of that country’s legal system under Apartheid. Second, it develops an extended argument for a challengingly normative conception of the rule of law, complete with compelling practical illustrations of what can happen if officials charged with maintaining the integrity of a legal system adopt a less substantive standard. And third, the book is well written and a pleasure to read.

South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) represents an unusual attempt to confront, acknowledge and overcome the devastating injustice, violence and hatred generated during the Apartheid era. What makes it unusual is the conscious decision to set aside demands for retributive justice. Instead, by exposing abuses and violations of human rights, and then compensating victims and pardoning confessed perpetrators, the TRC aimed to establish a framework in which former antagonists could set aside adversarial postures and work together to create a new, integrated and just South Africa. Whether this laudable experiment will succeed remains to be seen.

What was clear early on was that the TRC could not hope to complete its task if it did not investigate the performance of the legal system and the legal profession under the Apartheid regime. Apartheid was a social and political construct that systematically denied basic human rights to the vast majority of South Africa’s population on the basis of race. A substantial amount of state violence was required to secure this result. But it is a singular, remarkable fact that the racial divide was maintained by a legal system which in many respects resembled its counterparts in liberal democratic societies where the courts actively and successfully protect civil liberties. What is particularly striking is that gross human rights violations were permitted, even approved, by legal institutions that appeared to respect such fundamental legitimacy-conferring principles as the rule of law and judicial independence. Equally troubling is the observation that the system was staffed by functionaries many of whom had unimpeachable credentials as advocates of human rights. So how could this justice system have produced such iniquitous results?