A judgment of the UK Supreme Court in November 2024 includes the following summary of an important international law principle:
“It is an established principle of many national legal systems including England, that questions as regards rights to and interests in land and other immovable property are governed by the law of the country in which the property is situated. Jurisdiction to decide those questions belongs to the courts of that country.
Where immovable property is situated in country A, neither the law nor the courts of country A will recognise or give effect to any laws or judicial decisions of other countries which purport to govern or decide issues of rights to or interest in that immovable property, save to the extent that any exceptions exist under the law of country A.”
In this case, a Russian citizen who left Russia in 2015 and had lived in England since 2017 acquired a leasehold interest in a house in London. A Russian bank in provisional liquidation, obtained a judgment on an unjust enrichment claim against the London resident and sought to enforce its rights through its liquidator against the London property.
An expert on international law, Dr. FA Mann, in a lecture summarised the position as follows:
“International jurisdiction is an aspect or an ingredient or a consequence of sovereignty … Laws extend so far as, but no further than the sovereignty of the State which puts them into force nor does any legislator normally intend to enact laws which apply to or cover persons, facts, events or conduct outside the limits of their State’s sovereignty. This is a principle or, perhaps one should say, an observation of universal application. Since every State enjoys the same degree of sovereignty, jurisdiction implies respect for the corresponding rights of other States.”
Whether property is characterised as movable or immovable is a matter for the State in which the property is situated. Immovable property is usually all rights over and in relation to land.
As there was no UK statute overriding the principle the UK SC refused to enforce the Russian judgment against the property.
Similar international law principles and the law of non-extraterritoriality apply in South Africa. States have devised other ways of enforcing their legislation by contraventions having consequences within their own jurisdiction as with, for instance, US sanctions laws, English bankruptcy laws and European privacy laws.