Content area
Full Text
I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions. Any errors are my responsibility.
I. Introduction
The availability of freezing injunctions is one of the key factors attracting international commercial litigation to the English courts.1 Although litigants can obtain some sort of asset preservation relief in other legal systems, a unique feature of English freezing injunctions is their extensive international scope and flexibility to address the most creative attempts to dissipate assets.2 Not only is it possible to obtain a freezing injunction over a defendant's assets located abroad, but such an order may be collateral to foreign substantive proceedings.3 One of the justifications for such a wide international scope of freezing injunctions is said to be the need to prevent unscrupulous defendants from exploiting territorial boundaries for the purposes of making themselves judgment-proof.
A related policy underpinning worldwide freezing injunctions collateral to foreign proceedings is the apparent need for English courts to assist foreign courts, especially in the context of tackling international fraud.4 To give effect to these policy goals, courts have relied on the equitable characteristics of freezing injunctions. In particular, the courts have artificially stretched the principle that injunctions operate in personam by interpreting this as a licence to extend freezing injunctions to assets located outside their territorial jurisdiction. In doing so the courts may have lost sight of relevant principles of public and private international law. It will be argued that the manner in which the English courts address the issue of international jurisdiction in the context of freezing injunctions is incompatible with the functions of jurisdictional rules in private international law. The root of this problem is that the application of English common-law rules of jurisdiction in freezing injunction cases is based on an overly narrow view that principles of public international law do not have any impact on the limits of jurisdiction in civil litigation.
The first objective of this article is to examine the international scope of freezing injunctions and determine whether the current practice is satisfactory. The second related objective is to examine whether there is illegitimate interference with the sovereignty of other States in the context of freezing injunctions. The article focuses on freezing injunctions in support of...