The Permanent Bureau of the Hague Conference on Private International Law (HCCH, head office in The Hague, the Netherlands) is seeking legal interns for the period July to December 2020. Applications are now open!

The deadline for applications is Friday 27 March 2020 (18:00 CET).

More information is available here.

The era of globalization is characterized by the dynamic movement of people across borders and migration in various parts of the world. The juxtaposition and coexistence of different ethnic, cultural or religious groups within society poses the challenge of accommodating divergent legal, religious and customary norms. Of key concern is how far the fundamental values of the receiving state ought to be imposed on all persons on the soil, and to what extent the customs, beliefs and the cultural identity of individuals belonging to minority groups should be respected. This challenge arguably requires reconsidering and reevaluating the conventional methods of private international law that are grounded in the territorial “localization” of legal relationships. Against this background, Yuko Nishitani (Professor at Kyoto University, Japan) envisaged studying various conflict of laws issues from the viewpoint of cultural identity in private international family law and delivered a lecture at the Hague Academy of International Law on “Identité culturelle en droit international privé de la famille”, which has been published in Recueil des cours, Vol. 401 (2019), pp. 127-450.  Read more...

Professor Ron Brand has just published a new article in the Journal of Dispute Resolution that arose from his presentation at the 2019 Annual Meeting of the American Society of Comparative Law. In it, he applies comparative method to international litigation from the perspective of a U.S.-trained lawyer, and particularly one who has been involved for over 25 years in the negotiations that produced both the 2005 Hague Convention on Choice of Court Agreements and the 2019 Hague Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Judgments in Civil or Commercial Matters.

The article is available here: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3532035

It took quite some time but the news is finally here: North Macedonia has an entirely new Private International Law Act.

The Act was adopted by the Assembly on February 4th 2020 and it was just published in the Official Gazette of the Republic of North Macedonia No. 32, on 10 February 2020. The Act is not available online yet but we will make sure to share it here as soon as it or an English translation is available.  Read more...

A spectre is haunting Europe – the spectre of human rights lawsuits. Striking human rights cases have always enjoyed high media attention. But lately, they appear in a new dimension in Europe. The headline-grabbing “KiK” trial before the Regional Court of Dortmund and the current discussion about the adoption of a German Supply Chain Law are proof of this: It has long ceased to be a mere thought that German companies could be held liable in Germany for damage that occurred somewhere in their global supply or value chain. But are civil courts and arbitral tribunals suited at all for enforcing international human rights obligations of business enterprises, which are already highly controversial under substantive law?  Read more...

Written by Anna Wysocka-Bar, Senior Lecturer at Jagiellonian University (Poland)

On 2 December 2019 Supreme Administrative Court of Poland (Naczelny S?d Administracyjny) adopted a resolution of seven judges (signature: II OPS 1/19), in which it stated that it is not possible – due to public policy – to transcribe into the domestic register of civil status a foreign birth certificate indicating two persons of the same sex as parents. The Ombudsman joined arguing that the refusal of transcription infringes the child’s right to nationality and identity, and as a result may lead to infringement of the right to protection of health, the right to education, the right to personal security and the right to free movement and choice of place of residence. Interestingly, the Ombudsman for Children and public prosecutor suggested non-transcription. The background of the case concerns a child whose birth certificate indicated two women of Polish nationality as parents, a biological mother and her partner to a de facto union. Parents applied for such transcription in order to apply subsequently for the issuance of the passport for the child.   Read more...

Following an earlier post, here’s a reminder of the First Edition of the Milan Investment Arbitration Pre-Moot.

Albert Henke prepared for this reason the following announcement:

On February, 14 and 15, 2020 will take place in Milan the First Edition of the Milan Investment Arbitration Pre-Moot, an event jointly organized by the Law Firm DLA Piper, Milan, Università degli Studi of Milan and the European Court of Arbitration (Italian section). The Pre-Moot will be a chance for ten University teams from all around the world to test their advocacy skills in moot arbitration hearings, in preparation for the Frankfurt International Arbitration Moot Competition, the oldest and most prestigious student competition in the area of investment protection law, scheduled for the beginning of March 2020 in Frankfurt (https://www.investmentmoot.org/news-2-2/). The Pre-Moot will be introduced by a Conference hosted by Università degli Studi on the topic: “Outstanding issues and recent developments in international investment arbitration”. All the information in the attached flyer. 

For the fourth consecutive year, the Annual Conference of the Society of Legal Scholars (SLS) will feature a section dedicated to Conflict of Laws. This year’s iteration of the conference will take place from 1 to 4 September 2020 at the University of Exeter (more information here). The conveners of the Conflict of Laws section, Andrew Dickinson and Máire Ní Shúilleabháin, have kindly provided the following Call for Papers.

SLS Conflict of Laws Section: Call for Papers and Panels for 2020 SLS Annual Conference at the University of Exeter

This is a call for papers and panels for the Conflict of Laws section of the 2020 SLS Annual Conference to be held at the University of Exeter from Tuesday 1^st  September – Friday 4^th September.   Read more...

Maria Caterina Baruffi (University of Verona) and Matteo Ortino (University of Verona) have edited the book «Trending topics in international and EU law: legal and economic perspectives». It collects the proceedings of the conference «#TILT Young Academic Colloquium», held in Verona on 23-24 May 2019 and organized by the Law Department of the University of Verona in collaboration with the Ph.D. School of Legal and Economic Studies and the European Documentation Centre.

The event fell within the activities of the research project «Trending International Law Topics – #TILT» supervised by Maria Caterina Baruffi and funded by the programme «Ricerca di base 2015» promoted by the University of Verona. It was specifically targeted to Ph.D. students and early career scholars, selected through a Call for Papers. The book publishes the results of their research with the aim of fostering the scientific debate on trending topics in international and EU law and their impact on domestic legal systems.   Read more...