Seminar on International Insolvency and 2026 Seminar Series on the Reform of the Brussels I bis Regulation (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid)

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The Área de Derecho Internacional Privado of the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (UAM) announces two initiatives of particular interest for scholars and practitioners of private international law.

1. Seminar: Nuevas perspectivas de la insolvencia internacional: reestructuraciones preconcursales y concursales

On Friday, 6 March 2026 (12:45), a seminar will be held at the Faculty of Law of UAM (Seminario II) in the framework of the research project “Nuevas perspectivas de la insolvencia internacional: reestructuraciones preconcursales y concursales” (PID 2022-140017OB100), coordinated by Professors Iván Heredia Cervantes and Elisa Torralba Mendiola. Read more

FAMIMOVE is back! – FAMIMOVE 3.0 starts on 1 March 2026

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FAMIMOVE 3.0 is an international project co-funded by the European Commission under the JUST-2025-JCOO program. The project’s full name is Families on the Move: The Coordination between international family law and migration law.

This project seeks to build on the results of FAMIMOVE 2.0 by focusing on children on the move in vulnerable situations and by consolidating the networks already established of experts in family law, child protection and migration law. It involves 7 universities in 6 EU Member States.

The duration of the project is two years from 1 March 2026 to 29 February 2028.

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SLS Annual Conference 2026: Private International Law Section: Call for Papers

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The following call was kindly shared with us by Michiel Poesen (University of Aberdeen).

This is a call for papers and panels for the Private International Law subject section at the SLS Annual Conference 2026. This year, the annual conference will take place at the University of East Anglia in Norwich. The conference dates are: 2-4 September 2026. SLS Conference

The Private International Law section will meet in the first half of the conference on 2-3 September, and we can run up to four sessions, each lasting 90 minutes.?Doctoral students are very welcome and are encouraged to submit papers for consideration in the Subject Sections Programme. The conference theme is Doing Law Differently, but the Private International Law Subject Section welcomes paper and panel proposals on any topics connected to our discipline.

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Registrations now open: “Digitalisation of Justice: Perspectives from Germany and the Netherlands”

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On Friday 29 May 2026 in Groningen, the Netherlands, Dr. Benedikt Schmitz from the University of Groningen is hosting a larger symposium on the topic of “Digitalisation of Justice: Perspectives from Germany and the Netherlands”

Theme

This event brings together leading and upcoming scholars to explore how digital transformation – from AI in adjudication to fully online proceedings – is reshaping our legal systems, while raising important questions about access to justice, procedural fairness, and the rule of law.

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ZEuP – Zeitschrift für Europäisches Privatrecht 1/2026

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A new issue of ZEuP – Zeitschrift für Europäisches Privatrecht is now available and includes contributions on EU private law, comparative law and legal history, legal unification, private international law, and individual European private law regimes. The full table of content can be accessed here: https://rsw.beck.de/zeitschriften/zeup.

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Choice of Law in the American Courts in 2025

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The thirty-ninth annual survey on choice of law in the American courts is now available on SSRN. The survey covers significant cases decided in 2025 on choice of law, party autonomy, extraterritoriality, international human rights, foreign sovereign immunity, adjudicative jurisdiction, and the recognition and enforcement of foreign judgments.

The cases discussed in this year’s survey address (among other things) the situs of cryptocurrency, exploding batteries in e-cigarettes, the sale of an antique military tank, the validity of an Urfi marriage ceremony, whether the Hague Service Convention prohibits email service on defendants in China, the enforcement of a Philippine forfeiture judgment, and claims of expropriation by German authorities during the Soviet occupation after World War II.

This annual survey was admirably maintained by Symeon Symeonides for three decades. The present authors are pleased to have extended this tradition.

Publication and Webinar: ELI Report on the EU Parenthood Proposal

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Yesterday, the Project Report of the ELI Project “Enhancing Child Protection: Private International Law on Filiation and the European Commission’s Proposal COM/2022/695 final”

It contains constructive amendments to the original Commission’s Parenthood Proposal and intends to bring it more in line with the acquis and general considerations of EU PIL. Furthermore, it puts the best interest of the child in the focus of the analysis.

Recent Publication: Towards Universal Parenthood in Europe

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The recently published book Towards Universal Parenthood in Europe (Editoriale Scientifica, 2025), edited by Laura Carpaneto, Francesca Maoli, and Ilaria Queirolo, offers a timely and rigorous contribution to European private international law and family law scholarship.

This volume follows the convention reported at this blog here and likewise presents the results of the UniPAR – Towards Universal Parenthood in Europe project, an EU-co-funded research initiative that addresses some of the most complex legal challenges in cross-border parenthood. Bringing together expert authors from different universities across European Union, the book combines theoretical frameworks with practical insights into how parenthood is recognised and regulated across different Member States. Covering six EU jurisdictions (Spain, Belgium, Italy, Bulgaria, Croatia and Poland) the book provides comprehensive national reports and comparative analyses on key issues of jurisdiction, applicable law, adoption, recognition of decisions and birth certificates and judicial cooperation in parenthood matters. The contents are available here.

This scholarly work advances the debate on the need for coherence in legal frameworks governing parentage and family relationships in European Union, especially in contexts involving cross-border mobility, assisted reproductive technologies and the recognition of family statuses across Member States. The final conclusions and recommendations serve both academic and policy audiences, offering structured reflections on legislative gaps and potential paths towards harmonised rules in EU private international law.This is an essential resource that deepens understanding of the legal implications of cross-border parenthood and strengthens the foundation for future legislative reform in European Union.

Richard Fentiman’s Lecture on Contactless Injunctions in English Law

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Richard Fentiman will be speaking on “Contactless Injunctions: New Approaches to Jurisdiction in English Law” at the forthcomming virtual workshop in the Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law series “Current Research in Private International Law” to be held on on Tuesday, 3 March 2026, at 11:00 (CET).

Richard Fentiman is Professor Emeritus of Private International Law at the University of Cambridge. His research is especially concerned with the law and practice of international commercial litigation and in particular with issues concerning jurisdiction and interim remedies. He will be speaking about the practice of the English courts which regularly grant extraterritorial injunctions to freeze foreign assets or prevent foreign proceedings. In a departure from past practice they will now do so even in the absence of any material link with England. This reveals much about English law’s distinctive approach to injunctions and begs deeper questions about the appropriate grounds for exercising jurisdiction in private international law.

The virtual lecture will be held as a video conference via Zoom. Prior registions is necesarry by Monday, 2 March 2026, using this link.

Jurisdiction in the Middle Ages

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Since not all readers of the blog can be presumed to be avid consumers of the Journal of Legal History, it may be worth pointing out that issue 46/1 (2025) (table of contents  here) was dedicated to jurisdiction in the European Central Middle Ages. In their (open access) introduction, historians Danica Summerlin and Alice Taylor suggest explaining medieval law neither through the (rediscovered) Codex Justinianus as the basis of a ius commune, nor through the concept of legal pluralism, but instead through the emerging law of jurisdiction. Indeed, their approach deviates from earlier state-focused analyses on struggles between state and church and instead “foregrounds actors and performances as the means by which jurisdictions were asserted, defined and formalized – or, to put it another way, as the means by which jurisdiction came into being.”  The issue emerges from a British Academy funded multi-year research project on Jurisdictions, political discourse, and legal community, 1050–1250 that brought together (legal) historians from Europe and North America – but not, it seems, conflict of laws scholars. The contributions are fascinating and relevant for those of us who want to understand conflict of laws through its history – and may perhaps even provide a basis for future collaborations across disciplines?