Universal Civil Jurisdiction and Forum Necessitatis: The Confusion of Public and Private International Law in Naït-Liman v. Switzerland

Abstract

Naït-Liman v. Switzerland invited the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg to consider whether a denial of municipal civil jurisdiction in a case involving allegations of torture committed outside of the forum State was a disproportionate interference to Article 6(1) ECHR. The judgment, however, confused separate principles of both public and private international law when dealing with universal civil jurisdiction and forum necessitatis. This misunderstanding in turn led to the respondent State being conferred a margin of appreciation in the proportionality assessment that was based upon doctrinally flawed methodological reasoning.