In The New European Private Law Martijn W. Hesselink presents a revised and supplemented collection of essays written over the last five years on European private law. He argues that the creation of a common private law in Europe is not merely a matter of rediscovering the old ius commune or of neutrally establishing the present 'common core' which may be codified in a European Civil Code. Rather, it is a matter of making choices, some of which may be highly controversial. In his book he discusses some of the most important choices which will have to be made with regard to culture, principles, politics, models, rights, concepts and structure in the new European private law.

International commercial arbitration and litigation are often seen as competing fora, fields of law, or markets. This intersection is at its highest at the forefront of any proceedings, at the jurisdictional stage. The analysis of jurisdictional issues at the forefront of an arbitration has been confined in a descriptive analysis of the law and jurisprudence, dealing with jurisdictional intersections almost in a mechanistic manner. These are not, however, issues which can be treated as mere mechanical rules. They are issues pertaining to core notions of authority, sovereignty, their origins and their allocation. At the same time, the pragmatic and practical domination of party autonomy is a fact which cannot be disregarded when one considers the normative and theoretical foundations of any model of dealing with these issues. This book moves beyond an analysis of arbitration and jurisdiction clauses to reconcile theory and practice, and provides an underlying theoretical model to explain and regulate jurisdictional intersections at the early stages of an arbitration from a private international law perspective. It combines both an in-depth engagement with the theoretical literature as well as a close examination and analysis of its practical consequences in the form of a restatement of the law of England and Wales. From a methodological perspective, it utilises contemporary theories in private international law to propose a coherent model of regulating arbitral jurisdictions which promotes autonomy and freedom of the parties at this stage. Demonstrating, first, how the theoretical model can be applied in practice and, second, to provide a basis for a potential future top-down or bottom-up approach of adopting the proposed model, it includes a succinct and practical codification of the current state of affairs in relation to the whole spectrum of jurisdictional issues in England and Wales to serve as a useful tool for practitioners considering jurisdictional issues both from the perspective of State courts and from the perspective of arbitral tribunals, as well as academics researching in these areas.

With cross-border successions becoming increasingly common in the context of the European Union, this timely book offers a systematic practical analysis of how cross-border successions should be treated, including examination of which courts may establish jurisdiction over succession disputes and which law governs such disputes. Key Features: Practical analysis of the provisions of the EU Succession Regulation Consideration of issues at the intersection between cross-border successions and taxation Analysis of the specificities of the European Certificate of Succession and its interface with national laws Study of cross-border successions in the context of both estate planning and the opening and liquidation of a succession Contextualization of the EU Succession Regulation in the framework of the national law and practice of several EU Member States A comprehensive study of EU cross-border succession law with global reach, this book is an invaluable source of reference and guidance for practitioners specialising in estate planning, family law and property law, including judges, notaries, tax specialists and lawyers. Scholars of European succession law and conflict of laws will also find this book's critical analysis an instrumental tool in their research.

Providing an overview of the legal practice of seizure and overindebtedness in 12 countries of the European Union, this volume explores the issues in the format of separate country reports. Each report systematically addresses the following topics: a description of the law of enforcement and enforceable titles; goods subject to seizure and conservatory methods, with a description of the procedure of seizure; and the possible conflict with respect to seizures by different creditors.

The number of disputes involving trusts has risen significantly in recent years. Many disputes take place in the international environment and cross-border jurisdictional issues may arise. These disputes often involve large sums of money, impacting significantly on family relations. The handling of such disputes requires specialist skills and knowledge, including an understanding of how and why private trusts are established and administered and the problems that can arise; an awareness of the cross-jurisdictional issues that may be relevant; and the ability to identify practical legal solutions to the dispute that are compliant with trust principles. International Trust Disputes provides a comprehensive and thorough treatment of this topic. Acting as a specialist guide for practitioners, it offers a survey of the special considerations that may arise with regard to trust disputes as well as a definitive guide to the issues which may be encountered in the jurisdictions where disputes are most likely to take place.

A group of scholars in the area of civil procedure discuss the fundamental emerging problem concerning the abuse of procedural rights. The main features of this problem, such as: the theoretical and moral implication of procedural abuses, the subjects who may commit them, the typologies of abusive practices, the consequences and analytical perspective. The emergence and the legal characters of these issues are studied with reference to a large number of systems. A comparative framework is provided by the general and final reports.

'Intellectual property and private international law' was one of the subjects discussed at the 18th International Congress of Comparative Law held in Washington DC (July 2010). This volume contains the General Report and 20 National Reports covering the US, Canada, Japan, Korea, India, and a number of European countries (Austria, France, Germany, UK, Spain, etc). The General Report was prepared on the basis of the National Reports. The national reporters not only describe the existing legal framework, but also provide answers to 12 hypothetical cases concerning international jurisdiction, choice-of-law, and recognition and enforcement of foreign judgments in multi-state intellectual property (IP) disputes. Based on their answers, the main differences between legal systems - as well as the shortcomings of the cross-border enforcement of IP rights - are outlined in the General Report. The Reports in this volume analyze relevant court decisions, as well as recent legislative proposals, such as the ALI, CLIP, Transparency, Waseda, and Korean Principles. The book is therefore a significant contribution to the existing debate in the field, and it will be a valuable source of reference in shaping future developments in the cross-border enforcement of IP rights in a global context. (Series: Studies in Private International Law - Vol. 10)

This volume contains 14 national reports and the General Report on the use of comparative law by courts, which were presented at the XIVth International Congress of Comparative Law in Athens. It provides a general survey of the frequency and methods of a comparative recourse to foreign law by courts, describing both the methods of such recourse and the typical fields in which it is undertaken. The reports offer a cross-section of contemporary court practice from a wide variety of countries around the world - large and small, unitary and federal, and with differing historical backgrounds. All these varied elements have an impact on the needs of national courts to look to foreign law for inspiration or as a model for dealing with new, unsettled issues of national law, and the reports illustrate well the impact of divergent traditions, attitudes and surrounding circumstances. Of special interest are both the role of comparative law and the comparative method employed in the practice of a supranational court, such as the European Court of Justice. In addition to the General Report, this volume contains national reports from the following countries: Canada, European Union, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Israel, Japan, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, United Kingdom and United States of America.

This book is a revised updated version of the General Course of Lectures on Private International Law delivered at the Hague Academy of International Law in 1990. The overall purpose is to examine the development and reform of choice of law rules in a number of common law jurisdictions. Much has been written about the Revolution' in conflict of laws in the U.S.A.; rather less account, however, has been taken of the major changes elsewhere in the common law world. This work serves to provide a critical account of those developments over the past few decades. Some changes are more recent and of international origin, such as the European Community Rome Convention (1980) on the law applicable to contractual obligations or the Hague Conventions on Child Abduction (1980), on Marriage (1978) and on Succession (1988), and consideration is given to their impact on common law jurisdictions. The process of change is a continuous one and attention is also devoted to current proposals for reform in the fields, for example, of domicile and torts.

The Developing World of Arbitration studies the recent emergence of Asia Pacific jurisdictions as regional or international arbitration centres, thanks to various reform efforts and initiatives. This book provides an up-to-date and comprehensive analysis of the ways in which arbitration law and practice have recently been reformed in Asia Pacific jurisdictions. Leading contributors across the Asia Pacific region analyse twelve major jurisdictions representing varying patterns and degrees of development, whether driven from top down, bottom up, or by some hybrid impetus. Setting the arbitration systems and reforms of each investigated jurisdiction in the context of its economic, political, and judicial dynamics, this book presents, for the first-time, a cross-jurisdiction comparative and contextual study of the developing world of arbitration in the Asia Pacific and contributes to comparative international arbitration literature from an Eastern perspective. It also aims to identify an Asia Pacific model of arbitration modernisation, one that may be distinct from a Western model, and predicts future trajectories of development and challenge in light of the ever increasing competition between Eastern- and Western-based arbitration centres. This edited collection will be an invaluable addition to the libraries of academics and practitioners in the field of international commercial arbitration.

This book examines uniform contract law in all relevant areas of legal doctrine and practice, and considers the barriers which exist toward it in modern nation states, namely in the German and English legal systems. The author suggests ways to overcome these obstacles, and develops an autonomous methodology of interpretation of transnational contract principles. The book analyses existing uniform transnational law rules, such as the UNIDROIT Principles of International Commercial Contracts.

This work provides an analysis of how foreign law should be pleaded and dealt with in the litigation process of another country. What weight should the trial court give to the relevant foreign law, and how should it decide what the foreign law actually is? The way foreign law is procedurally treated in court indicates to a certain extent the degree of tolerance of a legal system towards foreign ideas. The book compares how these issues are handled in different national systems, with particular focus upon civil litigation rules in the US, UK, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Belgium.

This book studies how technological solutions can be used to alleviate the current state of legal systems, with their clogged up courtrooms and inefficient conflict resolution methods. It reviews the shortcomings and disadvantages of traditional and alternative conflict resolution methods and turns to Artificial Intelligence for problem-solving techniques and solutions. The book is divided into four parts. The first part presents a general and systematic analysis of the current state of the legal systems, identifying the main problems and their causes.It then moves on to present UM Court: a framework for testing and prototyping conflict resolution services. This framework was developed with the objective of using Artificial Intelligence techniques to build a service environment for conflict resolution. The third part of the book takes a step into the future by analyzing the use of Intelligent Environments in the support of conflict management and resolution. It describes the approach taken and the experiments performed in the Intelligent Systems Lab of the University of Minho. The final part of the book contains the conclusions and shows the potential advantages of the use of Intelligent Environments as a way to implement better conflict resolution procedures (virtual or real), in which all the participants have access to more and better information and are able to take better informed decisions."

Disputes arising from foreign investment activities are on the increase, and with them a growing awareness among practitioners of a greater variety of settlement methods than most legal analyses have dealt with heretofore. With the experience gained in recent years from a broad spectrum of successful negotiation, arbitration, and litigation techniques, it is possible to derive a comprehensive, critical survey of the principal methods of settling foreign investment disputes. This book provides such a survey. The subject is treated systematically, dealing first with the internal balances within modern foreign investment contracts, the complexities that arise due to state participation or interference in these contracts, and the stances that are taken when disputes arise. It goes on to examine, in turn, the main issues involved in negotiation, arbitration, and judicial settlement as the methods of settling foreign investment disputes, discussing the controversial themes in each of these methods in detail. Recognizing that the focus of attention is shifting to the misconduct of multinational corporations, the last chapter contains a discussion of the role of domestic courts.

This study provides a comparative assessment of the current state of Private International Law by exploring the fundamental philosophical, ideological, and methodological challenges encountered during the 20th century and the responses to those challenges in the western world. Among the questions discussed are: the dilemma between "conflicts justice" and "material justice"; the conflict between the goal of international uniformity and the need or desire to protect state or national interests; the tension between the goals of certainty and flexibility; the symbiosis of the multilateral, unilateral, and substantive methodologies; and the antagonism or co-existence between choice-of-law rules and flexible "approaches", and between "jurisdiction-selecting" and "content-oriented" rules or approaches. Providing insight and diverse perspectives from 19 countries, this book should be useful to teachers or students of private international law or comparative law.

This book highlights the importance of optional choice of court agreements, and the need for future research and legal development in this area. The law relating to choice of court agreements has developed significantly in recent years, reflecting their increased use in practice. However, most recent legal developments concern exclusive choice of court agreements. In comparison, optional choice of court agreements, also called permissive forum selection clauses and non-exclusive jurisdiction clauses, have attracted little attention from lawmakers or commentators. This collection is comprised of 19 National Reports, providing a critical analysis of the legal treatment of optional choice of court agreements, including asymmetric choice of court agreements, under national laws as well as under multilateral instruments. It also includes a General Report offering an overview of this area of the law and a synthesis of the findings of the national reporters. The contributions to this collection show that the legal treatment of optional choice of courts differs between legal systems. In some countries, the law on the effect of optional choice of court agreements is at an early stage in its development, whereas in others the law is relatively advanced. Irrespective of this, the national reporters identify unresolved issues with the effect of optional choice of court agreements, where the law is unclear or the cases are conflicting, demonstrating that this topic warrants greater attention. This book is of interest to judges, legislators, lawyers, academics and students who are concerned with private international law and international civil procedure.

Hans van Loon has been at the forefront of private international law for well over a quarter of a century. Since joining the Hague Conference on Private International Law in 1978, he has presided over remarkable growth of the Organisation and significant changes to how it operates. He has been involved in the development of nine Hague Conventions, two of which are fast approaching 100 Contracting States, as well as the revision of the Statute of the Hague Conference. In his time as Secretary General, he has seen the Organisation's membership grow from 44 to 72 Members (with more than 60 non-Member States now party to at least one Hague Convention), which has turned the Hague Conference into a veritable world organisation. The continued relevance of the Hague Conference in the 21st century owes much to the commitment of Hans van Loon to private international law and his awareness of its role in a broader social context. This Liber Amicorum is a collection of contributions from friends and colleagues who have shared the negotiating table with Hans van Loon at various diplomatic sessions, collaborated with him on seminars and academic pursuits around the globe, and worked alongside him at the Permanent Bureau. Its pages are testament to a long and respected career, as well as to the meaningful relationships that Hans van Loon has developed along the way with academics, judges, practitioners and government officials from various legal backgrounds.

This book undertakes a systematic analysis of the 2019 Hague Judgments Convention, the 2005 Hague Choice of Court Convention 2005, and the 2017 Commonwealth Model Law on recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Judgments from a pragmatic perspective. The book builds on the concept of pragmatism in private international law within the context of recognition and enforcement of judgments. It demonstrates the practical application of legal pragmatism by setting up a toolbox (pragmatic goals and methods) that will assist courts and policymakers in developing an effective and efficient judgments' enforcement scheme at national, bilateral and multilateral levels. Practitioners, national courts, policymakers, academics, students and litigants will benefit from the book's comparative approach using case law from the United Kingdom and other leading Commonwealth States, the United States, and the Court of Justice of the European Union. The book also provides interesting findings from the empirical research on the refusal of recognition and enforcement in the UK and the Commonwealth statutory registration schemes respectively.

Customary law has been the subject of intense debate and the issues arising from the intersection of customs and the law are far from settled. This volume, separated into three parts brings together seminal work from scholars in law, economics and history. The first section analyses various perspectives on the history of customary law. Part two focuses on the commercial customary law and includes a number of case studies covering the role and limits of customary systems in a variety of commercial settings. The final section explores the role of custom in international law from a variety of legal and economic perspectives. Along with an original introduction by Professors Bernstein and Parisi, this valuable collection will be of interest to scholars, practitioners and academics with an interest in this diverse and interdisciplinary field.

Offering a comprehensive commentary on the Brussels I bis Regulation, chapters outline the origins and evolution of each article before delving into their interpretation in view of the case law of the European Court of Justice. Throughout the Commentary expert contributors provide guidance on this central instrument in the organization of the European judicial cooperation in civil and commercial matters. This in-depth, article-by-article Commentary reflects the status quo of European procedural law in civil and commercial matters. Its exhaustive evaluation of the corresponding case law demonstrates key precedents which can be applied to practical problems in the field related to jurisdiction, recognition and enforcement of decisions. Written using a clear, accessible structure, this Commentary will be a key resource for lawyers, judges and other legal practitioners in finding solutions to the practical difficulties they meet when dealing with cross-border disputes. Its detailed critical analysis of the regulation will also be of benefit to scholars and students of European procedural law and dispute resolution and arbitration.

This book explores the application of foreign law in civil proceedings in the British and German courts. It focuses on how domestic procedural law impacts on the application of choice of law rules in domestic courts. It engages with questions involved in the investigation and determination of foreign law as they affect the law of England and Wales, Scotland, and Germany. Although the relevant jurisdictions are the focus, the comparative analysis extends to explore examples from other jurisdictions, including relevant international and European conventions. Ambitious in scope, it expertly tracks the development of the law and looks at possible future reforms.

'El libro de S.I. Strong, Katia Fach Gomez y Laura Carballo Pineiro sigue la estructura de algunos textos clasicos de Derecho Comparado, como los de Rudolf Schelsinger y John Henry Merryman, cotejando los elementos generales de los dos grandes sistemas juridicos del Derecho Civil y el Common Law, analizando las semejanzas y diferencias de ambos sistemas con un fin eminentemente practico: atender a las necesidades de aquellos que trabajan cruzando las fronteras linguisticas para analizar un analisis comparado.' - Rodrigo Polanco Lazo, Universidad de Chile and Universidad de Berna, Suiza Comparative Law for Spanish-English Lawyers (Derecho Comparado para Abogados Anglo- e Hispanoparlantes) provides lawyers and law students who are conversationally fluent in both Spanish and English with the information and skills needed to undertake comparative legal research in their second language and facilitate communication with colleagues and clients in that language. Key features include: fully Spanish-English bilingual enables lawyers to develop the broad practical skills critical to success in today's increasingly international legal market covers a variety of substantive and procedural areas of law and includes information on legal and business practices in a number of English- and Spanish-speaking jurisdictions contextualizes information about foreign legal systems and develops readers' linguistic and legal skills through both immersion and instruction. Suitable for use by both individuals and groups, helping practitioners, academics and law students at any stage of their professional development, this book is perfect for anyone who wishes to move from conversational fluency in a second language to legal fluency. Comparative Law for Spanish English Lawyers / Derecho comparado para abogados anglo- e hispanoparlantes, escrita en ingles y espanol, persigue potenciar las habilidades linguisticas y los conocimientos de derecho comparado de sus lectores. Con este proposito, terminos y conceptos juridicos esenciales son explicados al hilo del analisis riguroso y transversal de selectas jurisdicciones hispano- y angloparlantes. El libro pretende con ello que abogados, estudiantes de derecho y traductores puedan trabajar en una segunda lengua con solvencia y consciencia de las diferencias juridicas y culturales que afectan a las relaciones con abogados y clientes extranjeros. La obra se complementa con ejercicios individuales y en grupo que permiten a los lectores reflexionar sobre estas divergencias.

This collection contains sixteen national reports and general discussion on the subject, dealing with limitations of actions, or "extinctive prescription", as the subject is usually called in civil law jurisdictions. This is both a highly technical and a highly political topic. The book focuses on the political aspects of extinctive prescription, specifically, how long should prescription periods run, as of what event, and interrupted by which circumstances for example. The trend in modern legislation has been to shorten the periods of prescription whilst occurrences in biology and medicine, however, have led to proposals to lengthen the limitation periods once more. The reports discuss the situation in Europe, Latin America, and North America, and display a comparative nature.

This book looks at the question of extending the reach of the Brussels Ia Regulation. The Regulation, the centerpiece of the EU framework on civil procedure, is widely recognised as one of the most successful legal instruments on judicial cooperation and its extension has long been anticipated. This examination looks at its extending to apply to defendants not domiciled in a Member State. It asks whether that extension can be justified when compared to the domestic rules of each Member State. It critically assesses the question, based on the findings of national reports. It then looks at the question from the EU perspective, the perspective of signatories to the Lugano Convention (for eg EFTA) and the wider global perspective. Private international lawyers will be keen to read the findings and conclusions, which will also be of interest to practitioners and policy makers.