Law Commons^™

Transdisciplinary Conflict Of Laws Foreword: Cavers's Double Legacy, Karen Knop, Ralf Michaels, Annelise Riles

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

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How Well Do U.S. Judgments Fare In Europe?, Samuel P. Baumgartner

Akron Law Faculty Publications

Transnational cases have become a prominent part of the litigation landscape in the United States. Class actions against foreign defendants are widespread, the Alien Tort Claims Act has emerged as a mainstay of proceedings to enforce international human rights law in U.S. courts, and the globalization of the economy has led to an increase in transnational regulatory litigation. In all these cases, however, the parties need to ask themselves whether an ensuing judgment or settlement can be recognized or enforced abroad. For quite some time, the perception in the United States has been that U.S. judgments do not fare very …

A New Agenda For The Cultural Study Of Law: Taking On The Technicalities, Annelise Riles

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

This article urges humanistic legal studies to take the technical dimensions of law as a central focus of inquiry. Using archival and ethnographic investigations into developments in American Conflict of Laws doctrines as an example, and building on insights in the anthropology of knowledge and in science and technology studies that focus on technical practices in scientific and engineering domains, it aims to show that the technologies of law - an ideology that law is a tool and an accompanying technical aesthetic of legal knowledge - are far more central and far more interesting dimensions of legal practice than humanists …

European Union's New Role In International Private Litigation, Ronald A. Brand

Articles

No abstract provided.

The Lugano Case In The European Court Of Justice: Evolving European Union Competence In Private International Law, Ronald A. Brand

Articles

On October 19, 2004, the European Court of Justice held its first en banc hearing since the 2004 enlargement to twenty-five Member States. The case was Opinion 1/03, involving a request by the Council of the European Union on whether the Community has exclusive or shared competence to conclude the Lugano Convention. While the case on its face deals only with a single convention, it has far broader implications and is likely to influence the development of private international law and private law on a Community level for years to come. This brief article traces the origins of the issues …

A Global Convention On Choice Of Court Agreements, Ronald A. Brand

Articles

This article reviews the work of the Special Commission of the Hague Conference on Private International Law, which meet during the first nine days of December 2003 to consider a Draft Text on Choice of Court Agreements. Negotiations originally sought a rather comprehensive convention on jurisdiction and the recognition and enforcement of judgments, with a preliminary draft convention being prepared in October 1999, and further revised at the first part of a Diplomatic Conference in June 2001. When it became clear that some countries, particularly the United States, could not agree to the convention being considered, negotiations were redirected at …

The (New?) Right Of Making Available To The Public, Jane C. Ginsburg

Faculty Scholarship

I am honoured to contribute to this Festschrift for Bill Cornish, the leading exponent of the English (even if many of them are in fact Anzacs) School of Copyright and Intellectual Property. In addition to greatly valuing his scholarship, I hold Bill in especial esteem for his unswerving sanity in ALAI meetings, and for the piano duets in which he occasionally indulges my spouse. The following essay is offered in the spirit of international inquisitiveness that has animated so many of my contacts with Bill.

Introduction To The Decennial Volume, George A. Bermann

Faculty Scholarship

Ten years ago, when the Columbia Journal of European Law began, the European Union was, as we tend to say, "in a different place" than it is today. The "internal market" or, as it was called, the "1992" program had very largely been achieved, validating the institutional changes wrought by the Single European Act and boosting incalculably the Community's credibility as a regional economic entity and potential international political force. The Member States had just successfully orchestrated what may fairly be regarded as their most ambitious Intergovernmental Conference to date, culminating in the Treaty of Maastricht. While the referendum road …

Regionalism Versus Globalism: A View From The Americas, Carlos Manuel Vázquez

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The well-deserved celebration of UNIDROIT'S first seventy-five years focused on a topic that is of particular interest to the Organization of American States and to the organ of the OAS to which the author belongs, the Inter-American Juridical Committee. The topic of the 75th Anniversary Congress--"Worldwide Harmonization of Private Law and Regional Integration"--implicates one of the several dichotomies with which we in the Inter-American system who work on questions of private international law (and international private law) have been grappling in recent years, the problem of regional versus global approaches to the harmonization of private international law (and international private …

Eustitia: Institutionalizing Justice In The European Union, Helen E. Hartnell

Publications

The European Union is installing new infrastructure upon which to build a "genuine European area of justice. This "European judicial area" constitutes a key component of the "area of freedom, security and justice" ("AFSJ"). The Amsterdam Treaty added the AFSJ as a dimension of the Union, in order to promote the free movement of persons. "EUstitia" is a neologism that aims to capture both pragmatic and aspirational aspects of this new European governance project. The term is used here to refer solely to the civil law component of the AFSJ. This article both examines EUstitia's key features, and explores the …

Conflict Of Economic Laws: From Sovereignty To Substance, Hannah Buxbaum

Articles by Maurer Faculty

This article examines how the globalization of economic markets, and attendant changes in international regulatory strategies, challenge the traditional framework of private international law. It examines a variety of developments in the areas of securities, antitrust, and bankruptcy law, analyzing the ways in which they undermine the conception of regulatory power as grounded in the territorial authority of sovereign states. Specifically, the article argues that these changes reflect a shift in conflicts jurisprudence away from the traditional jurisdiction-selecting model and toward a substance-based model, in which a state's economic policy interests can be protected simply through assurance that the substance …

Community Competence For Matters Of Judicial Cooperation At The Hague Conference On Private International Law: A View From The United States, Ronald A. Brand

Articles

The Amsterdam Treaty's introduction of Article 65 into the European Community Treaty took little time to achieve practical importance. In fact, the questions were practical as early as they were theoretical. A 1992 request by the United States that the Hague Conference on Private International Law negotiate a global convention on jurisdiction and the recognition of civil judgments resulted in a laboratory for the new-found competence of the Community. Thus, negotiations already underway--which included delegations from all 15 EU Member States--were affected significantly by the transfer of competence from those states to the Community institutions for matters under consideration at …

Book Review. Cross-Border Collateral: Legal Risk And The Conflict Of Laws. Edited By Richard Potok., Hannah Buxbaum

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Intellectual Property, Electronic Commerce And The Preliminary Draft Hague Jurisdiction And Judgments Convention, Ronald A. Brand

Articles

On October 30, 1999, a Special Commission of the Hague Conference on Private International Law adopted a Preliminary Draft Convention on Jurisdiction and Foreign Judgments in Civil and Commercial Matters ("Preliminary Draft Convention," or "PDC") which was further developed in June of 2001.Originally scheduled for a final diplomatic conference in the fall of 2000, the negotiating process was delayed as a result of serious questions raised about the draft language.

After a discussion of the history of the convention, this paper presents a review of the Preliminary Draft Convention text, describing its structure and scope. It then provides a focus …

European Law: Yesterday, Today And Tomorrow, George A. Bermann

Faculty Scholarship

Hans Baade's career spans a period marked by the progressive recognition of European law in American academic circles. At the time that Hans Baade decided to make the United States his academic home, historical circumstances had only recently brought to American shores a whole generation of legal scholars, mostly continental European in background and training. Aided by the compelling nature of the stories about law that they had to tell, these scholars connected strategically with an American legal academy that was then only slowly and tentatively emerging from what could be described, not unfairly, as a period of relative intellectual …

Treatment Of Multi-Courts Jurisdiction Agreements, Seow Hon Tan

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

An increasingly popular manner of drafting jurisdiction clauses in cross-border contracts involves the selection of the courts of more than one jurisdiction. Traditionally, parties would submit all disputes to the courts of a particular country under an exclusive jurisdiction agreement or agree that the transaction is subject to a particular jurisdiction without intending to create an obligation to proceed there and nowhere else. Of late, the Singapore courts have encountered litigation over multi-courts jurisdiction agreements. A common form involves the naming of a particular court with one of the parties being given the option to proceed anywhere else.

Nationality, Domicile And Habitual Residence - Does The New German Citizenship Law Call For A Change Of A Principal Connecting Factor In Private International Law ?, Marc Cziesielsky

LLM Theses and Essays

The purpose of the new citizenship law which was proposed by the new German federal government was to give legal aliens living in Germany a choice to become German citizens without having to give up the nationality which was conferred on them by their parentage or descent. This thesis will question whether this rigid concept should be completely abolished after an assessment of both the constitutionality and the exact implications of the new citizenship law. In the light of the conclusions, the comparative part of this thesis will then focus on a more general approach and will compare the concepts …

International Copyright: From A "Bundle" Of National Copyright Laws To A Supranational Code?, Jane C. Ginsburg

Faculty Scholarship

In recent years, the number and content of substantive norms that international copyright treaties impose on member states have increased considerably. It is therefore appropriate to consider the extent to which those instruments have in effect created an international (or at least multinational) copyright code, as well as to inquire what role national copyright laws do and should have in an era not only of international copyright norms, but of international dissemination of copyrighted works. This Article first considers the displacement of national norms through the evolution of a de facto international copyright code, elaborated in multilateral instruments such as …

Direct Effect Of International Economic Law In The United States And The European Union, Ronald A. Brand

Articles

One of the most important and challenging issues in international law is the manner in which we address the relationship between the individual and the international legal system. The traditional framework, in which we set a "sovereign" government between the individual and the development and application of the rules, is no longer sufficient in all circumstances. The fact that governments feel insecure or threatened by the application of international legal rules in actions brought by individuals is not sufficient reason to preclude that development. The purpose of government is not to perpetuate traditional power structures, it is to provide security …

The New New International Economic Order: Private International Law, Helen E. Hartnell

Publications

The domain of international law has expanded to encompass matters traditionally thought to be within domestic jurisdiction via private international law (PIL) conventions and related phenomena. I wish to refer broadly to the unification and harmonization of legal rules and procedures governing the relations between private parties. This is by no means a new phenomenon; it is not only going strong, but growing stronger. My goal today is not to survey current developments in this field so much as to reflect upon some pervasive themes.

Choice Of Law Clauses In Consumer Contracts: A Comparative Study Of American And E.E.C. Law, Jean-Marie Henckaerts

LLM Theses and Essays

The selection of the law applicable to a certain relationship may seem to be the sole purpose of choice of law rules. However, it is questionable whether this choice should be made independent from the content of the various laws available. The selection of the most appropriate law cannot disregard the social, economic and political values that form the basis of substantive rules. In modern legal systems, social values such as consumer protection are recognized to a growing extent.

The present work explores the concept of choice of law – namely party autonomy with a focus on consumer contracts in …

Private International Law And The U.N. Sales Convention, Peter Winship

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

No abstract provided.

Book Review. Cases On Conflict Of Laws (Lorenzen), Comparative Commentaries On Private International Law, And Cases On Conflict Of Laws (Harper And Taintor), Frank Edward Horack Jr.

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.