New text: The Conflict of Laws in New Zealand

Readers of this blog may be interested to hear of a new textbook on private international law, recently published by LexisNexis. The Conflict of Laws in New Zealand is the first comprehensive treatment of the subject from a New Zealand perspective. Drawing on principles developed in common law countries while adopting a comparative perspective, it explains how New Zealand law has developed into an indigenous body of rules to deal with problems of jurisdiction, choice of law, recognition of judgments and international civil procedure. The textbook may be of interest to scholars and academics outside New Zealand who are looking for a comparative treatment of problems in modern private international law, as well as any lawyers who find themselves interacting with New Zealand law in practice.

The first part of the book covers the four distinct functions of the conflict of laws: adjudicatory jurisdiction (including personal and subject-matter jurisdiction), choice of law, recognition and enforcement of judgments, and international civil procedure. The second part of the book addresses the conflict of laws rules as they relate to the main subject areas of private law, including obligations, property and trusts, succession, family law and corporations and insolvency