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International law is, after all, international law

The former king of Spain called upon a 300-year-old treaty that established Gibraltar as a British territory to argue that he should not be sued for spying on a former lover in London.

Juan Carlos, who abdicated from the Spanish throne in 2014 following a series of scandals, is accused by Corinna zu Sayn-Wittgenstein, a 56-year-old Danish socialite and his former lover, of putting her under illegal surveillance in the UK and elsewhere after the two fell out.

Lawyers representing 83-year-old Juan Carlos at the High Court in London on Monday cited the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht to argue that their client should be granted immunity under Spanish, British and international laws.

I expect to see all the right on get behind this. For international law is indeed international law. We’ve got to take those folks crawling across the beaches because the law says so. We’ve got to decarbonise ourselves back to the middle ages because the international law says so. Legally binding treaties are legally binding treaties after all……

7 thoughts on “International law is, after all, international law”

  1. Whatever you think of the case, you have to applaud the lawyers’ ingenuity. Definitely approaching Albert Haddock’s standard.

  2. You forgot the most ancient international law: “One law for you, one law for me” ..

    Old Can’t-keep-it-in-his-pants is most certainly guilty of wasteful bad taste, as the bird in question doesn’t exactly look bad, but not worth €65 million for the opportunity for a shag here and there..

  3. That’s a pretty smart move by the Spaniards. “You keep citing this Treaty as the reason for keeping Gibraltar. Well, you’ll have to abide by all of it”. To which our answer should be, “Okay, but shut up about Gib, then.” I mean, it seems a fair trade-off to me.

    I fear it won’t be, though.

  4. And now we remember that the Supreme Court has ruled the government cannot withdraw from an international treay without Parliament’s approval. Well then, neither can the High Court!

  5. But as the article noted, he abdicated. He WAS a king, and would have been granted sovereign protections then. But he said “nope, I’m done with all that”. So why should the protections continue after he left the job?

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