This authoritative text covers jurisdiction and interstate and international private litigation in torts, contracts, business planning, family law (marriage, same-sex relationships, property rights, support, child custody), property, succession and estate administration, and the recognition of sister-state and foreign judgments. The text examines in depth the development and current state of approaches to choice of law. It also addresses issues of jurisdiction and applicable law in private litigation in federal court.

This versatile and pedagogically effective book brings together in a coordinated way the rich and diverse perspectives and 80 years combined teaching experience of two highly respected conflicts scholars: the author of 30 annual surveys of choice-of-law cases and drafter of three conflicts codifications, and the author of a path-breaking, established casebook on civil procedure. The book presents the real world of conflict law, behind the leading cases and beyond America's borders, through distilled documentation of what courts actually do and strategically placed extensive information about international practice and the law of other countries.

Choice of Law provides an in-depth sophisticated coverage of the choice-of-law part of Conflicts Law (or Private International Law) in torts, products liability, contracts, forum-selection and arbitration clauses, insurance, statutes of limitation, domestic relations, property, marital property, and successions. It also covers the constitutional framework and conflicts between federal law and foreign law. In this book, Symeon C. Symeonides focuses entirely on Choice of Law pertaining to the question of whether the merits of the dispute will be resolved under the substantive law of the state of adjudication (lex fori), or under the law of another involved state. Structured in three parts, this book discusses the Federal framework, history, doctrine, methodology, and the practice of choice of law. The author begins with the history of choice-of-law doctrine and follows its subsequent evolution to the present. He then moves on to methodology, and extensively explores the case law of the last fifty years, covering what courts say, and especially what they do. Symeonides goes on to identify emerging decisional patterns and extracts descriptive rules or tentative predictions about likely outcomes.

Codifying Choice of Law Around the World chronicles, documents, and celebrates the extraordinary, massive country-by-country codification of Private International Law (PrIL) or Conflict of Laws that has taken place in the last 50 years from 1962-2012. During this period, the world has witnessed the adoption of nearly 200 PrIL codifications, EU Regulations, and international conventions--more than in all preceding years since the inception of PrIL. This book provides a horizontal comparison and discussion of these codifications and conventions, firstly by comparing the way they resolve tort and contract conflicts, and then by comparing the answers of these codifications to the fundamental philosophical and methodological dilemmas of PrIL. In the process, this book re-examines and dispels certain widely held assumptions about choice of law, and the art and science of codification in general. Written by Symeon C. Symeonides, a renowned PrIL and comparative law expert with extensive first-hand experience in drafting codifications and advising other drafters, Codifying Choice of Law Around the World will serve as an indispensable point of reference for any serious study or discussion of PrIL and comparative law.