10.01 The nature of jurisdiction within the United Kingdom

This Chapter is the oddest in the book. It has the primary aim of answering the ‘in London, or in Edinburgh, or in Belfast?’ question, but in doing so it encounters the extent to which rules of English or United Kingdom law have been formulated in such a way that that the otherwise-revoked provisions of the Brussels/Lugano regime (and in an archaic form, at that) still influence the jurisdiction of English courts in civil and commercial matters. The rules are in the Civil Jurisdiction and Judgments Act 1982, made at Westminster and not in Brussels. It follows that the impact of European law in this chapter is not as upon retained, or assimilated, laws, but as material to which a court has been directed to ‘have regard’: by Sections 16(3) and 16(3A), so far as concerns the rules set out in Schedule 4 to the Act; by Section 15E(2) for the provisions set out in Sections 15A to 15E. That serves to distance it from the intricacy of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 and the performative contortions of the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform Act) 2023.1