Erasmus School of Law (under the ERC project Building EU Civil Justice) in collaboration with the Max Planck Institute for Procedural Law Luxembourg, and the Montaigne Centre for Rule of Law and Administration of Justice (Utrecht University) are hosting the seminar ‘Innovating International Business Courts: A European Outlook’ that will take place in Rotterdam on 10 July 2018.

In relation thereto Erasmus Law Review invites submissions for its upcoming special issue on International Business Courts – a European and Global Perspective on topics relating to court specialization, specifically relating to the development of international business courts in Europe and beyond, and focusing on justice innovation and their relevance for access to justice and the judicial system, including the challenges they may pose for judicial administration, litigants and other stakeholders. Contributions can be theoretical, empirical as well as policy oriented. Interdisciplinary approaches are especially encouraged. The issue will also include papers focusing on the Netherlands, the United Kingdom (England and Wales), France, Germany, and Belgium, and deriving from the seminar.

Authors of selected papers will be exempt from registration fees for the seminar and will have the opportunity to present a poster during the drinks after the seminar.

Please submit an abstract in English of no more than 500 words to Erlis Themeli (themeli@law.eur.nl) and Alexandre Biard (biard@law.eur.nl) before 10 June 2018. Please include your name, affiliation, and a link to your research profile. You will be informed on the outcome on 24 June 2018 at the latest. Responsible issue editors are Xandra Kramer (Erasmus University Rotterdam/Utrecht Utrecht) and John Sorabji (University College, London).

The final paper should be 8,000-12,000 words in length (including footnotes) and must comply with the Erasmus Law Review’s Authors Guidelines. Selected papers will go through the regular double-blind peer review process and publication is subject to the outcome of this review process. The deadline for submission of the paper is 1 October 2018.

For more information see the Call for Papers.

To celebrate its 30th Private International Law Day, the SICL is holding a conference devoted to the new challenges of what is sometimes described as the “collaborative” or “sharing” economy. It will take place in Lausanne on 28th June 2018.

The concept of economy includes crowdfunding, “Uberisation” and all other intermediary activities using a digital platform. These mass phenomena, witnessed on a global scale, put in question the very notion of the territorial division of state borders. Is the digital space in which these platforms operate a true space, capable of being delineated and regulated at the national level, and which falls into the territorial scope of application of a law? Or is it rather a volatile cloud, globalised, delocalised, incapable of being pinned down on such a territorial basis? Is it still possible for nation states to guarantee their citizens and/or residents legal protection with regard to the intermediaries who employ them or who offer them their services? Or has it not become essential, even urgent, that a supranational law be devised and placed in the same cloudy skies in which the platform operates? Further still: is it possible to require platforms and their operators to be measured against the particular requirements of a state, notably those concerning the protection of workers and consumers? What role can contemporary private international law play in this regard?

All these questions present a challenge to the supposed neutrality sought by private international law and bring to the fore its potential political and protective role. In this respect, the state can use private international law in order to guarantee cross border protection to the weakest actors in the marketplace – notably, workers and consumers – who reside within its territory (and/or its citizens). On the other hand, however, it may be argued that state interference aimed at constraining those who operate in the digital economy may lead to harmful distortions of the global market. In this regard, what guarantees should be afforded to the freedom of the internet and, at the same time, to that of workers, whose decisions to join and work with a digital platform are made of their own free will? These considerations therefore demand that we draw on the traditional principles of party autonomy and decisional harmony. Speakers include Janine Berg, ILO Genève, Andrea Bonomi, Université de Lausanne, Miriam Cherry, University of St. Louis, Valerio De Stefano, KU Leuven, Marie-Cécile Escande Varniol, Université Lumière, Lyon II, Pietro Franzina, Università degli Studi di Ferrara, Ljupcho Grozdanovski, Université de Genève, Florence Guillaume, Université de Neuchâtel, Tobias Lutzi, University of Oxford, Anne Meier, MSS Law, Edmondo Mostacci, Università Bocconi, Etienne Pataut, Université Paris 1, Panthéon-Sorbonne, Ilaria Pretelli, Institut suisse de droit comparé, Teresa Rodríguez de las Heras Ballell, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Gian Paolo Romano, Université de Genève, et Gerald Spindler, Georg-August-Universität.

Click here for whole program and further information.

Edited by Delphine Porcheron, Mélanie Schmitt and Juliette Lelieur

The University of Strasbourg is organizing workshop series on the protection of Human Rights in transnational situations. The research is conducted in criminal law, labour law, and private international law. After the first meeting which took place last January with the presence of Horatia Muir Watt, Dominique Ritleng and Patrick Wachsmann, the second one will be held in Strasbourg on June 5, focusing on civil and environmental liabilities and private international law.

Speakers include :

• Bénédicte Girard, University of Strasbourg
• Marie-Pierre Camproux, University of Strasbourg
• Pauline Abadie, University of Paris Sud
• Fabien Marchadier, University of Poitiers
• Patrick Kinsch, University of Luxembourg, Attorney at law Luxembourg
• Louis d’Avout, University of Paris II
• Jean-Sylvestre Bergé, University of Lyon III
• Caroline Kleiner, University of Strasbourg

For more information click here.

David Restrepo Amariles (HEC Paris), Eva Mouial Bassilana (Université Côte d’Azur) and Matteo Winkler (HEC Paris) have posted on SSRN an article titled The Impact of the French Doctrine of Significant Imbalance on International Business Transactions. The paper is forthcoming on the Journal of Business Law.

The abstract reads as follows.

This article examines the concept of “significant imbalance” (SI) under French law and its impact on international business transactions. “Significant imbalance” is a legal standard meant to assess whether a contractual clause is unfair (abusive). Although initially restricted to consumer law, it has been extended to general contract law with the implementation of a reform entered into force on 1 October 2016. Previously, the Commercial Court of Paris in the ruling Ministry of Economy v Expedia, Inc (2015) had qualified SI as an “overriding mandatory provision” (“loi de police”) under Regulation 593/2008 on the applicable law to contractual obligations (Rome I). As a consequence, SI became operative in respect of international contracts despite an express choice of a foreign governing law made by the parties to the transaction. This article argues that, as a result of Expedia and the 2016 reform, French courts can interfere with international business transactions by striking down contractual terms that they deem unfair according to the SI standard. The analysis focuses on two key issues. On the one hand, notwithstanding recent judicial precedents, SI still fails to provide a reliable test for predicting which clauses or contracts are at risk of being deemed unfair. On the other hand, the legal arsenal supporting the French legislator’s disapproval of SI allocates great power to French courts and the French Government to pursue tort lawsuits against foreign companies allegedly oppressing their commercial partners with SI clauses. Empirical evidence shows that these actions are highly successful compared with those commenced by private actors. The article concludes that all these aspects, together with SI’s turbulent case law throughout the years, will give rise to uncertainty in international business transactions and may eventually disadvantage France in the global competition in such a field.