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New Journal Announcement: the Chinese Journal of Transnational Law

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Wuhan University Institute of International Law, in partnership with global research leader SAGE, is delighted to announce the launch of a new journal “Chinese Journal of Transnational Law”.

The Chinese Journal of Transnational Law is a double-blind peer-reviewed journal that aims to address global challenges from the perspective of transnational law, which is broadly defined to cover international law (public and private), international economic law, comparative law, the interaction between domestic and international law, and any other legal field possessing a cross-border element. This journal embraces relevant submissions from different cultures and regions and attracts readers from the global, regional and Chinese markets. The journal shall be open to not only traditional doctrinal and theoretical legal research on transnational law, but also contextual and inter-disciplinary research. Although focused on contemporary matters in its aspiration to be a forum for the latest debates on transnational legal studies, it also considers submissions inspired by in-depth historical perspectives that cast new light on present developments. The CJTL covers broad topics including but not limited to:

  • Innovative transnational dispute resolution, including both state-to-state and private dispute resolution mechanisms and the impact of culture, psychology, language and geopolitics on dispute resolution;
  • Transnational trade, investment and economic governance;
  • Transnational family law and the wellbeing of children, including surrogacy, child abduction and same sex marriage in the cross-border context;
  • Transnational regulation of technology;
  • Transnational corporate responsibility and governance;
  • Transnational protection of private rights in tort and transactions;
  • Transnational law and development;
  • Transnational law and global health governance;
  • Transnational environment protection and climate change;
  • Transnational criminal law;
  • Unilateral sanctions, extraterritorial regulations and blocking law.

The Chinese Journal of Transnational Law accepts submissions year round on any topic covered in the journal scope. In the meantime, the journal will publish calls for special issues occasionally. A call for the first special issue is going to be announced soon. You can find more information about this journal and submit your paper here.

Summer school on Consumer’s Rights and Market Regulation in the EU invites applicants

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We can feel it in the air but also in the incoming announcements – the summer is approaching. One of the great ways to spend a part of it is at a summer school. The University of Uidne (Italy) is the host to the 16th edition of the summer school Consumer’s Rights and Market Regulation in the European Union, to be held on 12-21 July 2023.

The programme addresses aspects of legal protection of consumers and market regulation, including the private international law topics, and a moot court. The full schedule is available here. The course accepts undergraduate students, graduates (who graduated no more than five years ago), PhD students from faculties of law, economics, political science or international relations., and limited amount of posts are available on the academic qualifications bases. The early bird is until 30 April 12:00 pm GMT, and the enrollment closes on 31 May 12:00 pm GMT. For details, please consult the Call for applications Udine Summer School 2023.

The summer school is organised within the Jean Monnet Module “CoRiMaR” (Consumer’s Rights and Market Regulation in the European Union) by the Department of Legal Sciences of the University of Udine (Italy), together with a consortium of European universities including University of Essex (UK), De Montfort University (UK), Universitatea de Vest din Timisoara (Romania), East Anglia University (UK), University of Belgrade (Serbia), University of Rijeka (Croatia) and University of Szeged (Hungary).

Eulogy for Professor GUO Yujun

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Written by Yan WANG, Huaqiao University 

It was with great sadness that we received word from her family that Professor GUO Yujun passed away at 1:50 am GMT+8 on 22 April 2023, at the age of 59.

Professor GUO was a distinguished professor of private international law, art law, and cultural heritage law at the Wuhan University International Law Institute in China. She is the Vice-President and Secretary-General of China Society of Private International Law. During her 30 years at Wuhan University, she taught and mentored hundreds of students, inspiring many of them to work under her supervision from the undergraduate to doctoral level.

She published more than 100 academic articles and works in Chinese, English and Japanese with a wide range of domestic and international influence. She had been to Hokkaido University Law Faculty as a Japanese Government (MEXT) Scholarship student from the October 1991 to April 1993. During her academic career, she went to Harvard University, Osnabrück University, and Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law as a visiting scholar.

Professor GUO earned the affection from her family, friends, colleagues, and students. A list of her representative private international law publications can be found here.

 

One Small Step Forward: The Mainland China Is Trying to Differentiate Inter-regional Private Cases From Those Foreign-related Ones

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For quite a long time, what China had been doing for its interregional private laws was modelling their solutions on international conventions such as the Hague Service Convention, the Hague Evidence Convention and the Hague Judgments Convention etc. Normally they eventually got a slimmed-down Arrangement for the corresponding matter. This was quite different from what happed in the EU where the enhanced versions of the Hague Conventions could be seen and something extra could even be achieved. Also different from the EU where the ECJ could give answers when many questions at national law level were elevated and tested in the context of Regulations at the EU level, there has been no common court for interregional instruments within China so far. Apart from those bilateral Arrangements, all regions within China are basically treating one another as a ‘foreign country’ in terms of private laws.

The situation is, however, changing, at least from the Mainland side. Yesterday, I was invited to attend a conference which was under the support of the Supreme People’s Court of PRC and organized by the High Court of Guangdong Province that is geographically the closest one to Hong Kong and Macau. The purpose of the conference was to read the Draft Interpretation prepared by a research team of the Guangdong High Court and to be formally adopted and issued by the Supreme People’s Court later on. This Draft Interpretation is, again, an unilateral act of the Mainland China who wants to better its civil procedural rules regarding cases related to Hong Kong and Macau (possibly also Taiwan included). Indeed, different from the past experience for the past decades where inter-regional private cases were generally handled in analogy with foreign-related ones, the Mainland China is now trying to differentiate them. It wants to have more advanced and enhanced rules for interregional private cases. Keep an eye on the development of Chinese interregional private laws ……

The International Dimension of Intellectual Property Disputes

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Lex & Forum Law Review and Sakkoulas Publications SA are organizing an online conference on:

The International Dimension of Intellectual Property Disputes

PRESIDING:

Prof. Lia Athanasiou, University of Athens

PRESENTERS:

• Prof. Dan Svantesson, Faculty of Law, Bond University/Australia,

‘Intellectual Property disputes and PIL: A Swedish and Australian perspective’

• Prof. Dr. Marketa Trimble, Samuel S. Lionel Professor of Intellectual Property Law, William S. Boyd School of Law, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Stanford University

‘The Territorial Discrepancy Between Intellectual Property Rights Infringement Claims and Remedies’

• Prof. Dr. Gerald Spindler, Faculty of Law, Georg-August Universität Göttingen

‘EU Digital Services Act und EU Digital Markets Act and its impact on private international law’

• Dr. Ioannis Revolidis, University of Malta,

‘International jurisdiction on online copyright infringements’

More information available here

FAMIMOVE (FAMIlies on the MOVE) – the website is now live!

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FAMIMOVE is an international project co-funded by the European Commission under the JUST-2022-JCOO program. The FAMIMOVE website is now live and may be consulted by clicking here.

The project  aims to improve the protection of migrant children and families by bringing actual practice more in line with EU goals and values, such as the protection of fundamental rights and best interests of the child. It also seeks to provide more effectiveness to EU objectives through a better coordination of instruments in overlapping fields, such as Regulations in private international law in family law matters and migration law rules. The duration of the project is 24 months (from 1 January 2023 to 31 December 2024). For more information, click here.

The Consortium is coordinated by Prof. Marta Pertegás Sender (University of Maastricht) and is comprised of the following partners: Prof. Bettina Heiderhoff (University of Münster), Prof. Costanza Honorati (University of Milano-Bicocca); Prof. Fabienne Jault (University of Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines), Prof. Ulf Maunsbach (Lund University), Prof. Orsolya Szeibert (Eötvös Loránd University) and Prof. Jinske Verhellen (Ghent University). Each Partner is further supported by colleagues with expertise in  cross-cutting fields, thus bringing together experts who are representatives from a large range of European regions. More information is available here.

FAMIMOVE (actually, FAMIMOVE 2.0) is a spin-off of an earlier project with the same name, which was very successful and resulted in two insightful documents published by the European Parliament: Children on the Move: A Private International Law Perspective and Private International Law in a Context of Increasing International Mobility: Challenges and Potential.

Any new developments on FAMIMOVE will be published here – stay tuned!

 

Registration Open: Webinar Series on the Future of Cross-border Parenthood in the EU

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As announced on this blog and on the blog of the EAPIL, a series of webinar has been organised under the title The Future of Cross-Border Parenthood in the EU – Analyzing the EU Parenthood Proposal.

This is just a quick reminder for those who also read the EAPIL blog – and a new announcement for those who do not – that registration is open through the form available here.

 

The programme of the series is as follows:

  • 3 May 2023, webinar chaired by Claire Fenton-Glynn: Surrogacy in comparative perspective (Jens Scherpe), and What’s in it? Subject matter, scope and definitions (Cristina González Beilfuss)
  • 10 May 2023, webinar chaired by Fabienne Jault-Seseke: The EU Proposal and primary EU law: a match made in heaven? (Susanne Gössl), and The law governing parenthood: are you my father? (Tobías Helms)
  • 17 May 2023, webinar chaired by Nadia Rustinova: The mutual recognition of decisions under the EU Proposal: much ado about nothing? (Alina Ontanu), and Who decides on parenthood? The rules of jurisdiction (Maria Caterina Baruffi)
  • 24 May 2023, webinar chaired by Steven Heylen: Authentic documents and parenthood: between recognition and acceptance (Patrick Wautelet), and The European certificate of Parenthood: a passport for parents and children? (Ilaria Pretelli)

The series of webinars is organized by Cristina González Beilfuss (Universitat de Barcelona), Susanne Gössl (Universität Bonn), Ilaria Pretelli (Institut Suisse de Droit Comparé), Tobias Helms (Universität Marburg) and Patrick Wautelet (Université de Liège) under the auspices and with the support of EAPIL, the European Association of Private International Law.

Jürgen Basedow 1949-2023

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Jürgen Basedow, a giant of private international law (and numerous other disciplines), has died –  suddenly, and completely unexpectedly, on April 6. He was my teacher (though only briefly so in a formal position), my predecessor as director of the Hamburg Max Planck Institute (where he served as director 1997-2017) and my colleague as an emeritus. His (impressive) vita is still visible on the MPI website.

Words fail me, as they have many, and so I will not attempt to write more here. A longer appreciation of his life and work and personality is in preparation. Until then, you may wish to read one or more of the following announcements that I am aware of; please announce in the comments or by email what I may have overlooked.

Also, the Hamburg Max Planck Institute is setting up a virtual book of condolences. Please consider sharing your own appreciation there, even if you have already written them up somewhere else.

RIP.

Longer appreciations:

Corinna Budras at Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

Giesela Rühl at EAPIL

Federico Garau at conflictuslegum

José Carlos Fernández Rozas at his personal blog

Manfred Wandt at VersROnline

Konrad Duden / Matteo Fornasier in EuZW 2023, 395-396

Eva-Maria Kieninger / Ralf Michaels in RabelsZ 87 (2023), 229-235

Anatol Dutta / Christian Heinz in JZ 2023, 610-611

Brief online announcements:

GEDIP / EGPIL

Max Planck Institute for International and Comparative Law, Hamburg

Leuphana University

Tbilisi University

Università degli Studi di Pavia

International Academy of Comparative Law

Monopolkommission

Brief appreciations on social media (incomplete)

Vasco Becker-Weinberg, Pejovic Caslav, Axel Halfmeier, Matthias Kurth, Michael Kubiciel, Monopolkommission, Gülüm Özçelik, Mateusz Pilich

Final Call for Participation in the EAPIL Working Group Survey on the Reform of the Brussels Ibis Regulation

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The following information has kindly been provided by Tess Bens, Research Fellow at the Luxembourg Max Planck Institute:

In September 2022, an EAPIL Working Group met for a conference in Luxemburg to discuss the perspectives and prospects of a reform of the Brussels Ibis Regulation. There were panels on the role and scope of the Brussels Ibis Regulation, collective redress, third state relationships, jurisdiction and pendency, and recognition and enforcement. As a result of the conference, Professor Hess and a team of Researchers of the Max Planck Institute Luxembourg published a preliminary Working Paper which put forward 32 proposals for the reform of the Brussels Ibis Regulation.

Parallel to the preliminary Working Paper, a survey was set up to collect reactions and comments on the proposals. By now, over 60 participants from many different Member States have answered the survey. Participation in the survey is open to anybody interested in the reform of the Brussels I bis Regulation, irrespective of whether they are a member of the European Association for Private International Law. Your input is greatly appreciated. Please note that the survey will be open until 15 April 2023.

UK Law Commission – Recruitment for Lead Lawyer

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The following information has kindly been provided by Professor Sarah Green, UK Law Commissioner for commercial and common law:

Thank you for your interest in our project Digital assets: which law, which court?. We would like to draw your attention to an opportunity to join the team, as the Law Commission is currently recruiting for a lawyer or legal academic to lead this project. This is an exciting opportunity to be at the forefront of legal policy development in this cutting-edge and complex area, working with a range of domestic and international stakeholders.

We are ideally looking for specific experience or demonstrable interest in the private international law of England and Wales. This role will ultimately require a good knowledge of conflict of laws, digital assets and electronic trade documents. However, we are also interested in receiving applications from lawyers or academics with different commercial or common law backgrounds, with an interest in law reform and who can demonstrate a capacity to quickly acquire knowledge of complex areas of law.

Details of how to apply, along with the full job description, essential qualifications and other details, are available at this link: Law Commission: Commercial and Common Law Team, Lawyer(Ref: 73409) – Civil Service Jobs – GOV.UK

We would be grateful if you could draw this opportunity to the attention of anyone who might be interested. The role is also potentially available as a secondment opportunity from a business or academic institution. Please note that, due to civil service policies, the candidate must be UK-based.

If you would like to discuss further, please contact:

Laura Burgoyne, Head of the Commercial and Common Law Team
Email:  laura.burgoyne@lawcommission.gov.uk
Telephone: 07793 966 296