ASIL Commentaries on Private International Law

This post has been written by Cristián Giménez Corte, Editor of the ASIL Commentaries on PIL.

We are pleased to present the third issue of Commentaries on Private International Law, the newsletter of the American Society of International Law (ASIL) Private International Law Interest Group (PILIG). As readers of the newsletter know, the name of our newsletter, Commentaries, represents a modest tribute to one of the founding fathers of modern PIL, Joseph Story, by borrowing the name of his seminal book “Commentaries on the Conflict of Laws, foreign and domestic,” and only replacing “Conflict of Laws” with “Private International Law” to better reflect the broader object of our discipline today.

The primary purpose of our newsletter is to communicate news on PIL. Accordingly, the newsletter attempts to transmit information on new developments on PIL rather than provide substantive analysis, with a view to providing specific and concise raw information that our readers can then use in their daily work. These new developments on PIL may include information on new laws, rules and regulations; new judicial and arbitral decisions; new treaties and conventions; new scholarly work; new conferences; proposed new pieces of legislation; and the like.

Commentaries aims to be a truly global newsletter, by reporting news from all major legal systems of the world, which may have different conceptions of PIL. Thus, the PILIG newsletter is framed in a rather broad sense, comprising all types of situations generating potential conflicts of laws and/or jurisdictions, regardless of the “international” or “internal,” or “public” or “private” nature of those conflicting regulations.

To achieve what is perhaps the first comprehensive global approach to PIL, Commentaries includes five sections dealing with regional issues, edited by specialists on the field: Africa, edited by Richard Frimpong Oppong and Justin Monsenepwo Joost; Asia, by Chi Chung, Yao-Ming Hsu and Béligh Elbalti; the Americas by Cristian Giménez Corte and Jeannette Tramhel (Central and South America), and Freddy Sourgens and Mayra Cavazos Calvillo (North America); Europe, by Massimo Benedettelli, Marina Castellaneta, and Antonio Leandro; and Oceania, by Jeanne Huang. We would like to highlight the efforts made by our global editorial team in translating, both linguistically and legally, into English and for a global audience information that was originally in Japanese, Arabic, Portuguese, Spanish, Russian, Italian, French, German, Turkish, Vietnamese, and Chinese.

This third issue of Commentaries covers more countries and includes in greater detail recent developments in our field. Each regional section includes a brief introductory note, and a special chapter devoted to new scholarly work, which is of particular importance for those areas of the world where the dissemination of information on PIL is more difficult. The main developments covered by Commentaries occurred during 2016, including only a few developments occurred in late 2015 and early 2017.

In this third issue, Commentaries continues to develop a section introduced last year. This section is called “Global Conflict of Laws,” edited by Cristián Giménez Corte and Javier Toniollo, presents new developments on PIL that are not necessarily linked to one particular region or country in the world, but that are truly transnational or global.

Commentaries would not have been possible without the tireless support of the PILIG co-chairs, Freddy Sourgens and Kabir Duggal, and the hard and smart work of the section editors mentioned above. In addition, I would like to express our gratitude for the comments, suggestions and help provided by Sheila Ward, Matthew Gomez, and Mitsue Steiner. And I would like also to express our gratitude to Adriana Chiuchquievich, Emilia Gonzalez Cian y Martin Cammarata, for their assistance in the research and edition of the new section “Global Conflict of Laws.”

We would appreciate receiving your suggestions, comments and critiques. We welcome your feedback and participation. Please send me an e-mail at cristiangimenezcorte@gmail.com.