In the Matter of «Arrest of Ships» (A General Survey on the Arrest Conventions of 1952 and 1999)

In the international framework of provisional measures a special place has to be assigned to the arrest of ships, as specifically ruled by “Arrest Convention” of 1952 and subsequently modified by the “Arrest Convention” of 1999. Differently from other tipycal or atipycal provisional measures, the judge does not evaluate circumstances like «fumus boni iuris», «good arguable case on the merits», periculum in mora, documental evidence of the credit and so on; instead, he is called to grant the arrest just on the allegation of a maritime credit: he who has not a maritime credit, expressly numbered in the list of art. 1(1), he has not the possibility to obtain the arrest of ships and, on the other hand, he who has a maritime credit as listed, he can get the remedy with nothing but alleging his credit