The first edition of the HAIL Advanced Courses in Hong Kong, organised in cooperation with with the Asian Academy of International Law and (AAIL) and the Hong Kong Department of Justice, will take place on 11-15 December 2023 with a focus on “Current Trends on International Commercial and Investment Dispute Settlement“.
Read more

On Tuesday, October 10, 2023, the Hamburg Max Planck Institute will host its 37th monthly virtual workshop Current Research in Private International Law at 11:00-12:30 (CEST). Diego P. Fernández Arroyo (Sciences Po Law School) will speak, in English, about

Transnational Commercial Arbitration as Private International Law Feature

A significant part of private international law (PrIL) disputes is nowadays solved by means of arbitration. At the same time, the range of arbitrable issues has been growing up for decades. Consequently, arbitration is no longer ignored by PrIL scholars, who, nevertheless, hesitate about how to deal with it. Many of them are only attracted by the fact that arbitral tribunals are often confronted to ordinary problems of determining the law applicable to a particular issue. Through the lens of this classical-PrIL approach, they identify sometimes conflict-of-law rules in arbitration instruments. Without denying any interest to this option, we will try to provide a more comprehensive view, starting by revising the very respective notion of arbitration and PrIL as well as their interaction, and concluding to challenge the excessive role played by the seat of the arbitration.

A book edited by Kazuaki Nishioka on Treatment of Foreign Law in Asia  has just been published in the Hart Studies in Private International Law -Asia.

The blurb read as follows:

How do Asian courts ascertain, interpret, and apply a foreign law as the law governing the merits of the case? What should judges do if parties do not raise or disagree on the content of foreign law? This thematic volume in the Studies in Private International Law – Asia series analyses the treatment of foreign law before judicial authorities, that is, how the courts of Asian states deal with the proof of foreign law in court litigation involving cross-border elements.

The individual chapters cover 15 Asian jurisdictions: Mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, Sri Lanka, and India.

The Introduction and Conclusion examine similarities and differences in the approaches taken by the 15 Asian states with a view to assessing the extent to which those approaches are consistent or different from each other. The book also puts forward suggestions for harmonising differing approaches, especially between Asian common law and civil law states.

The book is a one-stop reference guide on the treatment of foreign law in Asia and will be indispensable to judges, practitioners, and scholars not just in Asia, but worldwide.

A new conflict of laws article was just published today on the African Journal of International and Comparative Law. It is titled: CSA Okoli, A Yekini & P Oamen, “The Igiogbe Custom as a Mandatory Norm in Conflict of Laws: An Exploration of Nigerian Appellate Court Decisions.”

The abstract reads as follows:

Under the Igiogbe custom of the Bini Kingdom of Edo State Nigeria, the eldest surviving son exclusively inherits the ancestral home of his deceased father. This custom is a mandatory norm in conflict of laws. Litigation on the custom has been described as a matter of life and death. There is a widely shared view among academic writers, practitioners, and judges that this customary law is absolute. Contrary to this popular view, this work argues that the Igiogbe custom can be displaced by statute and other customary or religious laws. To substantiate this position, this article examines all the reported appellate court decisions on the Igiogbe custom and other connected principles. It is often taken for granted that every Bini man is subject to customary law, thereby leading to the overriding application of the Igiogbe custom. Recent developments in case law suggest otherwise. There is a conflict of personal law question that is often ignored in most litigation concerning the Igiogbe. Careful consideration of this question can potentially lead to the application of other systems of succession law (statutory, religious, and other customary laws) other than the Igiogbe custom. Besides, these conflict of laws techniques and constitutional human rights norms can be used to strike the appropriate balance between competing interests and reasonable legitimate expectations of the deceased and their heirs.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a significant portion of international commerce is organized around instruments and structures that do not emanate from national states and laws but from private entities. Traditionally, most legal scholars addressing this phenomenon could be sorted into one of two camps: those who want to limit the notion of ‘law’ to the state and see instances of private ordering primarily as social, rather than legal phenomena; and those who consider national law already as a abstract concept with limited and decreasing importance for the reality of international business. Torsten Kindt belongs to neither of those two camps. With his recently published book, based on his doctoral thesis, he attempts to fill the gap left between the two seemingly irreconcilable positions, with a special focus on the transnational dimension of private ordering.

Read more