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Practice · three a day

Designation cases, worked

Real judgments from the UK courts and the EU courts, each read for what it actually decides — and for the ways a careless citation overstates it.

Why judgments, and not lists

A sanctions list is stale the week it is written, so an exercise built on one is a screenshot with an expiry date. A delivered judgment is the opposite: closed, dated, and retrievable by anyone from the official publisher for as long as the court exists. That is what these are built on.

Structure as at 24 August 2026. This explains how sanctions regimes are constructed, what each kind of measure does, and where the regimes diverge. It is not legal advice, it states no view on whether any particular party or transaction is caught, and it deliberately contains no statement of who is designated today — list state changes weekly and belongs at the official sources cited throughout.

Exercise 1UKstarter

Designated for what he published — and the principle of legality

Phillips v Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs

High Court of Justice, King's Bench Division (Administrative Court) · [2024] EWHC 32 (Admin) · 2024-01-12

A British journalist who had reported on the Donbas region was designated on the basis that his published content fed into a Russian propaganda narrative, and thereby supported actions destabilising Ukraine. His bank account was frozen. He sought judicial review, arguing that his designation flowed entirely from expressing political opinions on social media. Johnson J refused the application. Read the judgment for how a designation criterion is established — and what a court will and will not do with it.

  1. Under which primary Act and which regulations was the claimant designated, and which court decided the challenge? Write the citation you would use.
  2. The claimant argued that Parliament cannot have intended to authorise sanctions imposed in response to free speech. What is the principle of legality, and how did the court apply it here?
  3. The claimant's account was frozen and he declined to apply for licences to meet his basic needs. What does that tell you about the relationship between a freeze and a licence?
  4. A colleague summarises this case as "the court held that journalists can be sanctioned for their opinions". What is wrong with that as a statement of the decision?
Exercise 2UKintermediate

Designated for who she was married to — the association limb

Khan v Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs

High Court of Justice, King's Bench Division (Administrative Court) · [2024] EWHC 361 (Admin) · 2024-02-20

A Russian-born naturalised British citizen, living in the UK with her children, was designated not for anything she had done but because she was "associated with" her husband — a designated Ukrainian businessman — having received financial gifts from him worth hundreds of millions of pounds, one of them shortly before he was sanctioned. She applied to set aside the decision maintaining her designation. Cockerill J refused the application. This is the cleanest available illustration of a designation criterion that reaches a person through a relationship.

  1. What was the stated basis of the applicant's designation, and where in the regulations does that criterion sit?
  2. The applicant argued that designating someone wholly remote from Russian politics could not further the statutory purpose of dissuading Russia, and so was ultra vires on Padfield grounds. How did the court answer that?
  3. This exercise sits alongside the ownership-and-control tests on the comparison page. What is the difference between the two ideas, and why does confusing them matter?
  4. How should the gifts — hundreds of millions of pounds, one shortly before designation — be described in a report?
Exercise 3UKadvanced

The judgment on the shelf is not the last word

Shvidler v Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs; Dalston Projects Ltd and others v Secretary of State for Transport

Supreme Court of the United Kingdom, on appeal from the Court of Appeal (Civil Division) · [2025] UKSC 30, on appeal from [2024] EWCA Civ 172 · 2025-07-29

The practice holds the Court of Appeal judgment in the conjoined appeals of Dalston Projects (the detention of a superyacht) and Shvidler (an asset freeze), decided 27 February 2024. It is a substantial judgment on how a court reviews a sanctions decision for proportionality, and it is sitting in the library looking authoritative. Before citing it in anything, do the one check that this exercise exists to teach.

The held copy is not the last word

Until 25 August 2026 the library held ONLY the Court of Appeal judgment ([2024] EWCA Civ 172), which reads as though it were the last word. It is not: the Supreme Court dismissed both appeals on 29 July 2025 ([2025] UKSC 30). Both are now held. The exercise stands because the trap is general — a judgment on a shelf never announces that it has been overtaken.

  1. You are about to cite [2024] EWCA Civ 172 for the principles governing proportionality review of a sanctions decision. What must you establish first, and how?
  2. What in fact happened to these appeals, before which court, and on what date?
  3. Was the outcome unanimous? Be precise — the two appeals are not in the same position.
  4. Rewrite the citation for a report, and describe the Court of Appeal judgment correctly in one sentence.

New set daily · 5 exercises in the pool · each built on a closed, dated judgment and cited to the official publisher, never a commercial aggregator.

The architecture these cases sit inside — reach, ownership and control, licensing, enforcement — with every rule cited to its instrument:

The full comparisonThe walkthrough