Privatizing Dispute Resolution and its Limits.Third IAPL-MPI Luxembourg Summer-School

It is our pleasure to announce the third edition of the International Association of Procedural Law (IAPL) – Max Planck Institute Luxembourg Summer-School, which will take place in Luxembourg from the 1st to the 4th of July 2018.

The 3rd edition of the Summer School has chosen to explore the topic of “Privatizing Dispute Resolution and its Limits”, where “privatizing” is understood in a broad sense. Different avenues can be envisaged thereto related. The first one focuses on the defense of public interests by means of private litigation; a second comprises the mechanisms for dispute resolution alternative to State justice; the third one deals with the commercialization of the judicial system. Applications under the first prong shall address the case of litigation in the interest of the broader (public) interest of the law: a regulatory approach that in Europe has been adopted in the context of competition law, intellectual property law, consumer protection, data protection and to some extent, also for the defense of the environment, in the search of avenues for the extraterritorial application of mandatory law. Under the second prong applications shall refer to commercial and investment arbitration, sports arbitration, consumer ADR, online dispute resolution for domain names controversies and the like. The third prong candidates shall focus on the development of private access to justice (litigation insurance, third party funding, etc), ”marketization” of the bar activity, emergence of new private actors with the legaltech, etc. Proposals must take into account that for different reasons all the  phenomena alluded to are subject to limits: to be feasible, the extraterritorial application of mandatory national or regional law requires procedural and substantial preconditions such as international jurisdiction over the defendant, or the support of an appropriately designed choice of law rule. As for alternative mechanisms of dispute resolution, in spite of their detachment from the control of State courts important interfaces remain, as demonstrated by the possibilities to apply for the annulment of the arbitral award or its non-recognition; or by the on-going contestation of CAS decisions before the ECHR. Finally, although schemes of third party funding and the like facilitate access to justice for single claims that wouldn’t be brought individually to the court, they raise many controversies and challenges while remaining unregulated.

All papers submitted to the 2018 Summer School should delve into one or several of these issues.

Up to 20 places will be available for applicants having procedural law and/or dispute resolution mechanisms as their main field of academic interest and meeting the conditions explained in the dedicated website.

Please follow this link for the online application.