English and EU Perspectives on Hague 2019: Hybrid Seminar at UCL Laws

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Ugljesa Grusic (UCL) has kindly shared the following invitation with us.

On 24 March 2025, at 6pm UK time, Marta Pertegás (Maastricht University; University of Antwerp; a fulltime member of the Permanent Bureau of the Hague Conference on Private International Law between 2008 and 2017) and Alex Mills (UCL; a Specialist Editor of Dicey, Morris and Collins on the Conflict of Laws, with particular responsibility for, inter alia, the rules on the recognition and enforcement of foreign judgments) will give a seminar on The 2019 Hague Judgments Convention – English and EU Perspectives at the Faculty of Laws, University College London. The event will be delivered in a hybrid format and the readers of the blog are welcome to join either in person or on line.

The seminar is part of the International Law Association (British Branch) Lecture Series and will be chaired by Ugljesa Grusic.

On 1 July 2025, the 2019 Hague Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Judgments in Civil or Commercial Matters will enter into force in England and Wales. This historic regime establishes a general treaty basis for the recognition and enforcement of civil judgments between Convention States, supplementing the existing national rules and the Hague Choice of Court Convention 2005. Perhaps most significantly, it will provide common rules for the recognition and enforcement of judgments from England and Wales in EU Member States, and conversely, for EU Member State judgments to be recognised and enforced in England and Wales, to some extent filling a ‘gap’ created by Brexit.

This seminar will address the significance of this development from both an English and EU perspective, examining the main features of the 2019 Convention and considering the opportunities and challenges it presents.

To register, please follow this link.

U.S. District Court’s Order in the Venezuelan Deportees Case Was Not Extraterritorial

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The following post was kindly provided by Hannah Buxbaum, Vice President for International Affairs, Professor of Law and John E. Schiller Chair, Indiana University, and is cross-posted on tlblog.org

As was widely reported yesterday, the Trump administration permitted two planes carrying Venezuelan deportees to continue on their way to El Salvador after receiving a judicial order to turn the flights back to the United States. A story in Axios quotes an administration official who explains that they were not in fact “actively defying” the judge—the order just came too late, since the planes were already out of U.S. airspace. This seems to be an extraterritoriality argument, suggesting that the judge lacks authority to order an action to take place outside U.S. borders.

The administration has this completely wrong. The judge is ordering the administration to take action inside the United States—that is, to instruct the planes to turn around. That instruction will in turn cause something to happen elsewhere (the pilots will change course), but that doesn’t make the order impermissibly extraterritorial. This is exactly the same the basis on which courts in garden-variety civil disputes order parties subject to their jurisdiction to procure evidence or turn over assets that are located abroad. Moreover, since the planes were reportedly over international waters at the time the order was entered, compliance would not have required any actions by a foreign actor or within the territory of another state—in other words, it wouldn’t have created a conflict of laws.

Now that the deportees are already in El Salvador, that picture is more complicated, since local authorities there might refuse to take action. Even the existence of such a conflict, though, doesn’t mean that Judge Boasberg’s order exceeds his authority. It remains to be seen whether any of the other justifications the White House offered up for ignoring that order are any more compelling, but the argument that it didn’t apply once the planes had left the United States is certainly not.

For further leading expert input on extraterritoriality see one of our previous posts here.

Reminder: Quo Vadis Preferential Law Approach? A Survey on the Interpretation of Article 6(2) Rome I Regulation Across EU Member States

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Benedikt Schmitz (University of Groningen) has kindly shared the following reminder of his Call for Participants with us.

The project concerns the interpretation of Article 6 (2) Rome I Regulation in the EU Member States and is very limited in nature. Time commitments are therefore very limited. Click here for more information.

We are still looking for scholars from Croatia, Czechia, Estonia, Finland, France, Ireland, Italy, Luxemburg, Malta, Romania, and Slovenia. Danish scholars may also participate on the basis of Article 5(2) Rome Convention. Read more

Migrant Workers and Social Security Rights across Borders: a Right or a Privilege?

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You are invited to the third meeting of Migration Talks organized by the Jean Monnet Chair in Legal Aspects of Migration Management in the European Union and in Türkiye.

Speaker: Prof. Dr. Laura Carballo Piñeiro, Chair of Private International Law, Dean, Faculty of International Relations, University of Vigo

Title: Migrant Workers and Social Security Rights across Borders: a Right or a Privilege?

Date and Time: Wednesday, March 19, 2024, 10.30 a.m. -11.30 a.m. (CET)

Location: via Zoom (The link shall be provided upon request: migration@bilkent.edu.tr)

Abstract

Access to social security is a human right that only a quarter of the world population enjoy. Such an access is particularly challenging for workers who cross national borders, as they may not get access to a national scheme, get access only in a limited way compared to other national or resident workers in the country, be obliged to contribute to more than one system, or not benefit from a system to which had previously contributed due to relocation to their home country or a third country. State coordination in these matters is thus of the essence, in particular to ensure that contributions are only paid to one system at a time, aggregation and maintenance of acquired rights for those workers that are in the course of acquisition, and portability of benefits. Even in a coordinated scenario, legal divergence across countries might further complicate access to benefits. For example, the funding of a benefit by taxes and not contributions might automatically exclude posted workers from their enjoyment. The EU Social Security Coordination Regulation will be used in the presentation to address these principles, the challenges faced by States and social partners in their enforcement, and tools developed to address them. Outside this privileged area, coordination relies on a complex, but insufficient network of treaties which very much focus on the role of receiving countries. As the movement of workers increases, more attention should be paid to the role of sending States by researching the interplay between social protection and migrant studies.

 

Limitation period of the enforcement of a UK judgment in Greece

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Limitation period of the enforcement of a UK judgment in Greece

A judgment issued by the Division of Maritime Disputes of the Piraeus first instance court at the end of last year [nr. 3400/2024, unreported] was confronted with an issue which seldomly appears before Greek courts.

The issue raised before the Piraeus Court of First Instance, in the context of Regulation 44/01, was the following: Is it permissible to revoke the recognition of a foreign (English) judgment (order) that  was declared  enforceable in Greece, when allegedly it is no longer enforceable in the State of origin? Read more

Exploring the Inference of Similarity in Foreign Law

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Hot off the press and published in the Cambridge Law Journal, the article “The Inference of Similarity,” written by Marcus Teo, delves into the intricacies of what has traditionally been referred to as the “presumption of similarity” in English legal proceedings. Teo’s work challenges the conventional understanding of this presumption, arguing that it should be seen not as a true presumption but rather as an inference that courts can draw under certain circumstances.

Teo begins by outlining the challenges litigants who wish to rely on foreign law in English courts face. They must first demonstrate that the relevant choice-of-law rule selects the foreign law as applicable and then prove that the foreign law supports their claim or defence. This task is often complicated by the patchy or vague nature of foreign law evidence, leading courts to apply what has been termed a “presumption of similarity”—the idea that foreign law is presumed similar to English law when not sufficiently proven. Read more

New General Editor

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ConflictofLaws.net is happy to announce Saloni Khanderia from Jindal Global Law School as our new General Editor. Saloni joined the blog’s Editorial Board in 2019 and has been an active contributor ever since. She takes over from Jeanne Huang (University of Sydney) and will serve as the blog’s General Editor together with Tobias Lutzi (University of Augsburg).

The Editorial Board is indebted to Jeanne for her over two years of service as General Editor. During her tenure, important changes have been implemented regarding the blog’s operation, including the redesign of our frontpage with the new calendar feature. At the same time, our community has continued to grow to more than 2,5k subscribers of our e-mail newsletter and 5k followers on LinkedIn. We’re deeply grateful for the time and energy she has dedicated to the blog and are delighted that she will stay on the Editorial Board.

Reminder: CoL.net Virtual Roundtable on the Rome II Report (11 March, 12pm CET)

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On Tuesday, 11 March 2025, 12pm CET, ConflictofLaws.net will be hosting an ad-hoc virtual roundtable on the Commission’s Rome II Report.

Everyone interested is warmly invited to join via this Zoom link.

More information can be found here.

HCCH about to establish Regional Office for Africa (ROAF)

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As was mentioned before on this blog, increasing the participation of African states in the HCCH appears to be the most promising avenue to strengthen judicial cooperation on the African continent in the context of intracontinental, interregional as well as global judicial integration. Following several unsuccessful attempts to establish a physical presence on the African continent,[1] the HCCH Council on General Affairs and Policy (CGAP) has now warmly welcomed the Kingdom of Morocco’s proposal to host and, perhaps most importantly, entirely fund a HCCH Regional Office for Africa (ROAF) in Rabat.[2] Read more

Out Now: The Latest Issue of the Japanese Yearbook of International Law (Vol. 67, 2024)

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The Japanese Yearbook of International Law  (JYIL) is a leading reference publication that provides in-depth analysis and commentary on developments in international law from a Japanese perspective.

Published by the International Law Association of Japan since 1957 (originally as the Annual Yearbook of Private International Law until 2007), the JYIL covers a broad spectrum of topics, from public and private international law to comparative law, bringing together insights from top scholars and legal experts in Japan and beyond.

Each issue dives into key legal cases, legislative updates, and emerging trends, making it a must-read for researchers, academics, and professionals looking to stay in the loop on Japan’s legal landscape.

 

On that note, the latest volume of the JYIL (Vol. 67, 2024) has recently been released. Readers of this blog may find particular interested in selected articles, case notes, books review and English translations of court decisions related to private international law.

Read more