Jurisdiction(s):
United Kingdom

Key definition

Jurisdiction definition

What does Jurisdiction mean? Jurisdiction, in legal practice, describes a court’s power to hear and determine a dispute and the limits of that power, both by subject matter and by the territory over which the court’s authority extends. It encompasses personal jurisdiction over the parties (often based on service, presence, domicile or consent, including exclusive jurisdiction clauses) and the court’s territorial and subject‑matter competence. The term is descriptive rather than fixed by a single definition; its scope is set by statute, rules of court, international instruments and case law (for example, the Senior Courts Act 1981, the Civil Jurisdiction and Judgments...

England and Wales: jurisdiction over immovable property disputes, the immovables rule, the Moçambique rule (foreign land), and in personam exceptions including contracts, equity and trusts

Published by a LexisNexis Dispute Resolution expert

Practice notes

Practice Note

This Practice Note examines the two rules used to decide which courts have Jurisdiction to hear a dispute about immovable property. The two rules are, in substance, the counterpart of one another. They are the:

‘immovables rule’-an English legal principle that foreign courts have no jurisdiction over immovable property situated in England
‘Moçambique rule’-applied to decide whether the courts of England and Wales (English courts) have jurisdiction at Common law to determine a dispute about property located in another jurisdiction

What is the immovables rule?

The ‘immovables rule’ is a distinct category of private international Law within English law. Comparable rules, under different names, appear in several other national common law systems, for example Canada and the United States of America.

What links these rules is their use in Disputes involving rights to, or interests in, immovable property. The rules provide that such disputes:

will be governed by the law of the country where the immovable property is situated, ie the lex situs (the law of the country in which the asset is located). Note, the law

...

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Web page updated on 28/05/2026

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