In 2017 drivers working under contract for Uber in Ontario launched a class action.  They alleged that under Ontario law they were employees entitled to various benefits Uber was not providing.  In response, Uber sought to stay the proceedings on the basis of an arbitration clause in the standard-form contract with each driver.  Under its terms a driver is required to resolve any dispute with Uber through mediation and arbitration in the Netherlands.  The mediation and arbitration process requires up-front administrative and filing fees of US$14,500.  In response, the drivers argued that the arbitration clause was unenforceable.  Read more...

Marie-Luisa Loheide is a doctoral candidate at the University of Freiburg who writes her dissertation about the relationship between the status of natural persons in public and private international law. She has kindly provided us with her thoughts on a recent ruling by the German Constitutional Court.

According to Article 116 para. 2 of the German Basic Law (Grundgesetz – GG), every descendant of former German citizens of Jewish faith who have been forcibly displaced and expatriated in a discriminatory manner by the Nazi-regime is entitled to attain German citizenship upon request. This rule has been incorporated in the Basic Law since 1949 as part of its confrontation with the systematic violations of human rights by the Nazi-regime and is therefore meant to provide reparation by restoring the status quo ante.  Read more...

By Michael Douglas and Mhairi Stewart

Andrew Bell is a leader of private international law in Australia. His scholarly work includes Forum Shopping and Venue in Transnational Litigation (Oxford Private International Law Series, 2003) and several editions of Nygh’s Conflict of Laws in Australia (see LexisNexis, 10^th ed, 2019). As a leading silk, he was counsel on many of Australia’s leading private international law cases. In February 2019, his Honour was appointed President of the New South Wales Court of Appeal.

Recently, in Inghams Enterprises Pty Ltd v Hannigan [2020] NSWCA 82, his Honour provided a helpful exposition of the principles applicable to dispute resolution agreements, including arbitration and choice of court agreements. His Honour dissented from the majority of Justices of Appeal Meagher and Gleeson.  Read more...

Written by Inez Lopes (Universidade de Brasília) and Fabrício Polido (Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais)

Following the successful repercussion of the Webinar PIL & Covid-19: Mobility of Persons, Commerce and Challenges in the Global Order, which took place between 11 and 22nd May 2020, the Scientific Committee headed by Prof. Dr Inez Lopes (Universidade de Brasília), Prof. Dr Valesca R. Moschen (Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo), Prof. Dr Fabricio B. Pasquot Polido (Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais), Prof. Dr Thiago Paluma (Universidade Federal de Uberlandia) and Prof. Dr Renata Gaspar (Universidade Federal de Uberlandia) is pleased to announce that the Webinar´s videos are already available online (links below). The committee thanks all those professors, staff and students who enthusiastically joined the initiative. A special thank is also given to the University of Minas Gerais and the Brazilian Centre for Transnational and Comparative Studies for the online transmissions. The sessions were attainable to both participants and the audience.  Read more...

By Fieke van Overbeeke, Legal Counsel at the International Institute for International and Foreign Law – the Netherlands and research fellow at the University of Antwerp – Belgium.

On 31 May 2017 the European Commission launched a proposal to adopt a special conflict-of-laws rule that determines (i.a.) which minimum wages apply to the highly mobile cross-border working activities of lorry drivers (COM 2017, 278). After more than three years of heavy debate, this proposal was profoundly modified and the Council and the European Parliament still do not find each other, leaving many aspects to be still worked out (see also the Legislative Train on the European Parliament’s website). The purpose of this piece is to give an overview of the background of this proposal, the current state of affairs and the possible influence of a special conflicts-of-law rule on the sector from a conflict-of-laws perspective.  Read more...

Written by Mayela Celis – The comments below are based on the author’s doctoral thesis entitled “The Child Abduction Convention – four decades of evolutive interpretation” at UNED

As mentioned in a previous post, after many years in the making, the Guide to Good Practice on the grave-risk exception (Article 13(1)(b)) under the Child Abduction Convention (grave-risk exception Guide or Guide) has been published. Please refer to our previous posts here and here. This Guide to Good Practice deals with a very controversial topic indeed. The finalisation and approval of this Guide is without a doubt a milestone and thus, this Guide will be of great benefit to users.  Read more...

Written by María Barral Martínez, a former trainee at the European Court of Justice (Chambers of AG Campos Sánchez-Bordona) and an alumna of the University of Amsterdam and the University of Santiago de Compostela

The Hoge Raad Neederlanden (The Dutch Supreme Court), the referring court in the case Supreme Site Service and Others, C-186/19, harbours doubts regarding the international jurisdiction of Dutch courts under the Brussels I bis Regulation, in respect to a request to lift an interim garnishee order. An insight on the background of the case can be found here and here, while the implications of that background for admissibility of request for a preliminary ruling are addressed in section 1 of the present text.  Read more...

Written by John Coyle, the Reef C. Ivey II Distinguished Professor of Law, Associate Professor of Law at the University of North Carolina School of Law, and Katherine C. Richardson, Law Clerk, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, 2020-21 Term

European legal scholars have long bemoaned the difficulty in identifying “black letter rules” when it comes to U.S. private international law.  One area where this law is famously opaque relates to state enforcement of “outbound” forum selection clauses.  Outbound clauses—which are known as derogation clauses in the rest of the world—state that a dispute must be heard by a court other than the one where the suit was brought.  State courts in the United States generally refused to enforce these provisions prior to 1972.  After the U.S. Supreme Court rendered its seminal decision in The Bremen, however, attitudes began to change.  Today, it is generally acknowledged that state courts are far more likely to enforce outbound forum selection clauses than they were fifty years ago.  To date, however, nobody has attempted to determine empirically the extent to which state court practice has shifted since the early 1970s.  Our new paper seeks to accomplish this goal.  Read more...

Written by Silja Vöneky, University of Freiburg

Note: This blogpost is part of a series on „Corporate social responsibility and international law“ that presents the main findings of the contributions published in August Reinisch, Stephan Hobe, Eva-Maria Kieninger & Anne Peters (eds), Unternehmensverantwortung und Internationales Recht, C.F. Müller, 2020.

I. Introduction

1. The question of the status of transnational corporations in investment arbitration is of central importance for the division of spheres of responsibility, for the pursuit and enforcement of values, and thus for the bases of legitimation of the international legal order today.  Read more...