Evaluation of United Kingdom Judicial Precedent with regard to Implementation of Contractual Obligations Affected by Third Countries or Institutions' sanctions

Document Type : Research Article

Authors

1 Department of Law and Political Sciences, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran

2 School of International Relations of Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Tehran, Iran

Abstract

The increase of sanctions during the last two decades, especially unilateral sanctions, has created numerous legal issues, especially in contractual disputes before national courts. This question is raised, what effect do sanctions imposed by the country or an institution other than the country where the court is located have on the applicable laws and contractual obligations raised in the process of dealing with contractual disputes before that court? It is clear that the court located in the sanctioning country take into consideration the sanctions imposed by that country. In such a case and in case of conflict of sanctions with the rights and obligations of the litigants, the court will adhere to those sanctions in its final ruling. Now, can this court consider the sanctions imposed by third countries and institutions in the process of describing, interpreting and applying legal and contractual obligations? Therefore, in this article, the judicial practice of the UK’s courts in facing the issue of sanctions with foreign origin was evaluated. Finally, it became clear that legal procedure in this field in Britain is not unified; In some cases, the court ruled based on considerations related to UK foreign policy, and the sanctions of the third government were given effect, but in other cases, the sanctions were not given effect regardless of these considerations.

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