The State Immunity Act 1978

Abstract On 22 November 1978 the State Immunity Act 1978 came into force. Its purpose, according to its long title, is ‘to make new provision with respect to proceedings in the United Kingdom by or against other States; to provide for the effect of judgments given against the United Kingdom in the courts of States parties to the European Convention on State Immunity; to make new provision with respect to the immunities and privileges of heads of State; and for connected purposes’. As the Act makes ‘new provision’, it is a remedial statute. It initiates a new era in the field of sovereign immunity in English law, an era which will throw up problems of a new and different kind that have to be solved by way of statutory interpretation.