The First Postgraduate Law Conference of the Centre for Private International Law- University of Aberdeen

The Centre for Private International Law (CPIL) of the University of Aberdeen is pleased to host its first postgraduate conference, which is to be held on 17 November 2021. The Postgraduate Law Conference aims at bringing together early career scholars working in the private international law field or at the intersection of European Union law and Private International Law. The purpose is for scholars to present their research before esteemed peers with relevant expertise and receive valuable feedback for further development from academic experts.

 

The Conference will include panels on Private International Law aspects of International Family Law, International Commercial Law and ADR as well as European Union Law and will be complete with the unrivalled expertise of the Members and Associate Members of the CPIL and external scholars. For a full list of the participating scholars and to download the Call for Papers form, please click here. The deadline for the Call for Papers is 31 August 2021.

 

HCCH|Approach Initiative – Celebrating the 25th Anniversary of the 1996 Child Protection Convention

To celebrate the 25th anniversary of the HCCH 1996 Child Protection Convention, the HCCH is pleased to announce the launch of the Advancing and Promoting the Protection of All Children (Approach) Initiative!

The HCCH|Approach Initiative will consist of a series of activities and events culminating in the HCCH|Approach Event, to be held online on Tuesday 19 October 2021. Information on registration and the programme of the HCCH|Approach Event will be made available in due course.

Leading up to the HCCH|Approach Event, the Permanent Bureau of the HCCH is organising two competitions: the HCCH|Approach Essay Competition, and the HCCH|Approach Media and Design Competition. Entries can be submitted up until Friday 1 October 2021, 5.00 p.m. (CEST).

More information on the HCCH|Approach Initiative and its competitions is available here.

This post is published by the Permanent Bureau of the Hague Conference of Private International Law (HCCH). 

Just published: Mexican Journal of Private International Law No 45 – Celebrating its 25th Anniversary

The Mexican Academy of Private International and Comparative Law (AMEDIP) has just published the 25th Anniversary Issue of the Mexican Journal of Private International Law.  It is available here.

One of the main aims of this journal is to publish the papers presented at AMEDIP’s annual seminars, which must comply with the requirements set out in the convocations and are peer-reviewed. Click here to access the Journal page.

Below is the table of contents of the 25th Anniversary Issue (in Spanish):

 

DOCTRINA

– Pros  y  contras  del  Convenio  de  la  Haya  de  1996,  sobre  la competencia, la ley aplicable, el reconocimiento, la ejecución y cooperación en materia de responsabilidad parental y de medidas de protección de los niños / María Virginia Aguilar

– La retención ilícita del menor en un contexto familiar transfronterizo: aspectos de competencia judicial internacional / David Carrizo Aguado

– La (Des)  Apreciación Conjunta de  los  Convenios  de  la  Haya de 1980 y 1996 por el Tribunal Europeo de Derechos Humanos y el Perjuicio al Principio del Interés  Superior del Niño / Aline Beltrame de Moura

– El papel controversial del TEDH en la interpretación del Convenio  de  la  Haya  de  25  de  octubre  de  1980  sobre los Aspectos Civiles de Sustracción Internacional de Menores: Especial referencia a los casos Neulinger y Shuruk c. Suiza y X. c. Letonia  / María Mayela Celis Aguilar

– Algunos apuntes sobre sobre la competencia jurisdiccional civil internacional en materia de alimentos a la luz del Convenio de la Haya sobre los Aspectos Civiles de la Sustracción Internacional de Menores y el Derecho Procesal Peruano / Luis Raúl Serrano Arribasplata

– La extensión de  las  cláusulas  arbitrales a  partes no  signatarias con base en la Teoría del Grupo de Sociedades / Jorge I. Aguilar Torres

– Comentarios al Convenio de la Haya del 2 de julio de 2019 sobre Reconocimiento y Ejecución de Sentencias Extranjeras en materia Civil y comercial / Francisco José Contreras Vaca

– El Derecho Internacional Privado en el contexto internacional actual: Las reglas de competencia judicial internacional indirecta en el Convenio de la Haya de 2 de julio de 2019 y el acceso a la justicia / Carlos Eduardo Echegaray de Maussion

– La aplicación de la regla de conflicto en materia mercantil / James A. Graham

– Extraterritorialidad de la Foreing Corrupt Practices Act de 1977 / Francisco Jesús Goytortúa Chambon

– La Nacionalidad Mexicana / Leonel Pereznieto Castro

– Democracies and Major Economies are becoming authoritarian; Multilateralism and the rule of law is threatened: and the case of president Donald Trump / James Frank Smit

 

LA VOZ DEL COMITÉ EDITORIAL

– Los primeros 25 años de la Revista Mexicana de Derecho Internacional Privado y Comparado / Jorge Alberto Silva

– Contribución de la Revista Mexicana de Derecho Internacional Privado y Comparado al estudio y a la regulación de las transacciones privadas internacionales / José Carlos Fernandez Rozas

– Cultura de Arbitraje / Bernardo M. Cremades

 

NOTAS

– Los MASC: La incorporación de la TIC a procesos judiciales y alternativos / Erick Pérez Venegas

– Exposición de motivos: mi vida dedicada al DIPr / Leonel Pereznieto Castro

 

RESEÑAS

– Ortiz Ahlf Loreta: El derecho de acceso a la justicia de los inmigrantes en situación irregular / Jorge Alberto Silva

– Aguilar María Virginia: Manual de Derecho Familiar / Leonel Pereznieto Castro

– -Enríquez Rosas José David y González de Cossío Francisco: Arbitraje Comercial y de Inversión en el Sector Energético / Erick Pérez Venegas

– Pérez Amador Barrón: El Derecho internacional Privado / Leonel Pereznieto Castro

– Silva Jorge Alberto: Rapsodia Jurídica, selección de estudios  jurídicos  / Nuria González Martín .

 

DOCUMENTOS

– Ley Uruguaya de Derecho internacional Privado

New issue alert: RabelsZ 3/2021

The latest issue of RabelsZ is out. It contains the following articles:

Kai-Oliver Knops: Die unionsrechtlichen Voraussetzungen des Rechtsmissbrauchseinwands – am Beispiel des Widerrufs von Verbraucherdarlehens- und Versicherungsverträgen (The Requirements of EU Law on Abuse of Law and Abuse of Rights – the Example of the Right to Withdraw from Credit Agreements and Insurance Contract)Volume 85 (2021) / Issue 3, pp. 505-543 (39), https://doi.org/10.1628/rabelsz-2021-0023

In the European Union, it is apparently only in Germany that withdrawals by consumers and policy-holders are often rejected as invalid and abusive. Mostly it is argued that an objection of abuse is subject to national law and that application of the principle of good faith is a matter for the judge alone. In fact, the jurisprudence of the Court of Justice of the European Union sets strict limits on the objection of abuse and requires special justification, which the national legal system must comply with in accordance with the primacy of European Union law. Under EU law, withdrawal from consumer loans and insurance contracts will be vulnerable to an objection of legal abuse only in very exceptional cases and by no means as a rule.

 

Bettina Rentsch: Grenzüberschreitender kollektiver Rechtsschutz in der Europäischen Union: No New Deal for Consumers (Cross-Border Collective Redress: No New Deal for Consumers)Volume 85 (2021) / Issue 3, pp. 544-578 (35), https://doi.org/10.1628/rabelsz-2021-0024

The recently adopted Directive on representative actions marks the beginning of a new era for collective redress in the European Union. However, applying the Brussels Ia and Rome Regulations for questions regarding jurisdiction, recognition, enforcement and the applicable law entails jurisdictional and choice-of-law-related problems inherent in cross-border aggregate litigation as such: European private international law, including its rules on jurisdiction and enforcement, is designed for bipartisan proceedings and thus shows a variety of inconsistencies, deficits and contradictions when faced with collective redress. Moreover, applying a multitude of laws to a single collective proceeding generates prohibitive costs for the plaintiff side, while generating economies of scale on the defendant side. It is unlikely that the parties to collective proceedings will enter a subsequent choice of law agreement to reduce the number of applicable laws.

 

Frederick Rieländer: Der »Vertragsabschlussschaden« im europäischen Deliktskollisions- und Zuständigkeitsrecht (Locating “Unfavourable Contracts” in European Private International Law)Volume 85 (2021) / Issue 3, pp. 579-619 (41), https://doi.org/10.1628/rabelsz-2021-0025

The inconsistent case law of the ECJ concerning the task of locating pure economic loss, for the purposes of Art. 7 No. 2 Brussels Ibis Regulation and Art. 4 para. 1 Rome II Regulation, is characterisedby the absence of a careful theoretical analysis of the protective purposes of the relevant liability rules. In this article, it is submitted that in the voluminous category of cases where a party has been induced into entering an unfavourable contract with a third party, “damage” for the purposes of Art. 7 No. 2 Brussels Ibis Regulation and Art. 4 para. 1 Rome II Regulation generally occurs at the moment when the victim is irreversibly bound to perform its obligation to the third party, whilst it is immaterial whether and, if so, where the contract is performed. Although the locus contractus appears to be the most appropriate connecting factor in the majority of the relevant cases of misrepresentation – particularly for the purpose of tying prospectus liability to the market affected – it needs to be displaced, for instance, in those cases where consumers are lured into purchasing faulty products abroad by fraudulent misrepresentations on the part of the manufacturer.

 

Raphael de Barros Fritz: Die kollisionsrechtliche Behandlung von trusts im Zusammenhang mit der EuErbVO (The Treatment of Trusts under the European Succession Regulation)Volume 85 (2021) / Issue 3, pp. 620-652 (33), https://doi.org/10.1628/rabelsz-2021-0026

Few legal institutions cause more difficulties in the context of the European Succession Regulation (ESR) than trusts. There is, for instance, hardly any agreement on the scope of the exception created for trusts in Art. 1 para. 2 lit. j ESR. There is also widespread support in academic literature for the application of Art. 31 ESR to trusts, although neither the precise contours of this enigmatic provision nor its exact functioning in connection with trusts has yet been established. The present article addresses, therefore, the question of how trusts are to be treated within the ESR. In particular, it will be shown how Art. 1 para. 2 lit. j ESR is to be understood against the background of Recital 13. In addition, the question will be raised as to what extent Art. 31 ESR has any importance at all in connection with trusts.

 

Issue 2021(2) Dutch PIL journal

The second issue of 2021 of Dutch PIL journal, including both English and Dutch language papers, has just been published.

 

It includes these papers:

K.C. Henckel, Rechtskeuze in het ipr-arbeidsrecht: enkele gedachten over het begunstigingsbeginsel / p. 251-273

This article discusses the preferential law approach that is enshrined in Article 8(1) Rome I Regulation. This provision limits the effects of a choice of law in the sense that the choice may not deprive the employee of the protection afforded to him by the mandatory provisions of the law that would have applied in the absence of a choice. It is generally accepted that the law that is most favourable to the employee merits application. The determination of this preferential law requires a comparison between the chosen law and the law that would have applied in the absence of such a choice. The article examines the method of comparison used throughout Dutch case law which shows that a preferential law approach is rarely applied. Instead, the majority of judgments apply the mandatory provisions of the objectively applicable, Dutch, law without further explanation. Since the application of the preferential law approach seems to be plagued by ambiguity, this article questions the desirability and practical feasibility of the comparison between the chosen law and the mandatory provisions of the law that would have applied in the absence of such a choice.

 

L.C.J. van Apeldoorn, Erkenning van internationale rechtspersonen in het Nederlandse privaatrecht / p. 274-291

This article examines the grounds for the recognition of the legal personality of international legal persons in Dutch private law, focussing in particular on foreign states and international organizations. Based on an analysis of the decision of the Dutch Hoge Raad (Supreme Court) in UNRRA/Daan, it is argued that the legal personality of international organizations is recognised by means of the (analogous) application of a rule, codified in Article 10:119 of the Dutch Civil Code, according to which the legal personality of a corporation depends on its personal law. When considering the personal law of international organisations, which is public international law including the terms of the founding treaty, decisive is not whether the organisation is an international legal person, but whether it is granted, on the basis of public international law, legal personality in the legal orders of its member states. The rule governing the recognition of the legal personality of international organisations is not applicable to foreign states because public international law does not imply or require that states are afforded legal personality in municipal law. Rather, it is argued, the legal personality of foreign states is recognised on the basis of an unwritten rule of Dutch private international law, originating in international comity, that attributes legal personality to foreign states. The application of this rule coincides in practice with the application of another rule also originating in comity, requiring as a matter of public international law that foreign states are granted standing to be party to legal proceedings before municipal courts.

 

Okoli, An analysis of the Nigerian Court of Appeal’s decisions on foreign choice of court agreements in the year 2020 / p. 292-305

In Nigeria valid commercial contracts between parties are treated as sacrosanct and binding by Nigerian courts. It is however uncertain (unlike in the European Union) whether a valid foreign choice of court agreement, which is a term of the parties’ contract, will be enforced by Nigerian courts. In this connection, the decisions of Nigerian courts are not consistent. Nigerian courts have applied three approaches to the enforcement of foreign choice of court agreements – ouster clauses, the Brandon test, and the contractual approach. This article analyses the approach of Nigerian appellate courts to the enforcement of foreign choice of court agreements in light of three Court of Appeal decisions delivered in the year 2020.

 

latest phds, summary: Stuij, Iura novit curia en buitenlands recht. Een rechtsvergelijkend en Europees perspectief (dissertatie Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam, 2021) (samenvatting proefschrift) / p. 306-311

This contribution is a short summary of a PhD thesis defended at Erasmus School of Law on April 29th, 2021, on the legal maxim iura novit curia in relation to the application of foreign law in civil proceedings. The thesis is a result of a comparative research into Dutch, German and English law, as well as European law. It analyses, evaluates and recommends several approaches to the problem of foreign law in civil litigation. This contribution discusses, inter alia, the method of the thesis including its comparative approac

Extraterritoriality and International Law Conference and Webinar, September 15-17, 2021

A conference for a forthcoming Elgar Research Handbook on Extraterritoriality and International Law. The conference
will consist of a series of workshop panels, with the public being able to watch the discussions through a live webinar.
Opportunities will exist for audience Q&A.

Further information and registration can be found here: https://law.indiana.edu/news-events/lectures-events/extra.html

Hosted by:
Cedric Ryngaert
Utrecht University (Utrecht Centre for Accountability and Liability Law)

Austen Parrish
Indiana University Maurer School of Law

Day One
Wednesday, September 15

Welcome and Opening Remarks (8:15-8:30 am ET; 2:15-2:30 pm CET
Cedric Ryngaert, Professor of Public International Law, Utrecht University School of Law, Utrecht Centre for Accountability and Liability Law
Austen Parrish, Dean and James H. Rudy Professor of Law, Indiana University Maurer School of Law

Workshop #1 (8:30 am-10:00 am ET; 2:30-4:00 pm CET)
Moderator: Luca Pasquet, Assistant Professor, Utrecht University School of Law
1. Cedric Ryngaert, Professor of Public International Law, Utrecht University School of Law
International Jurisdictional Law
2. Michael Wood, Barrister, Twenty Essex Chambers & UN International Law Commission
Omri Sender, Advisor and Litigator in Public International Law
Extraterritorial Jurisdiction and Customary International Law
2. Tonya Putnam, Research Scholar, Arnold A. Salzman Institute of War and Peace Studies, Columbia
University
Political Science and Extraterritoriality
3. Maia Pal, Senior Lecturer in International Relations, Oxford Brookes University
Extraterritoriality and International Relations
4. Branislav Hock, Senior Lecturer in Economic Crime, Institute of Criminal Justice Studies, University of Portsmouth
Extraterritorial Corporate Crime Policing: Between Contestation and Cooperation

Workshop #2 (10:15-11:45 am ET; 4:15-5:45 pm CET)
Moderator: Francois Kristen, Professor, Utrecht University School of Law
1. Ellen Gutterman, Associate Professor, York University
Extraterritoriality in the Global Governance of Corruption: Legal and Political Perspectives
2. Anthony Colangelo, Robert G. Storey Distinguished Faculty Fellow and Professor of Law, SMU Dedman School of Law
Criminal Extraterritoriality
3. Christian Tietje, Professor of Law, Martin-Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg
Cristina Lloyd, Lecturer and Senior Researcher, Martin-Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg
Sanctions
4. Matthias Lehmann, Professor of Law, University of Vienna
Extraterritoriality in Financial Law
5. Magnus Killander, Professor of Human Rights Law, University of Pretoria
Africa and Extraterritoriality

Day Two
Thursday, September 16

Workshop #3 (8:30 am-10:00 am ET; 2:30-4:00 pm CET)
Moderator: Hannah Buxbaum, Vice President for International Affairs, Indiana University; John E. Schiller
Chair in Legal Ethics and Professor of Law, Indiana University Maurer School of Law
1. Dan Jerker B. Svantesson, Professor, Bond University
Global Speech Regulation
2. Asaf Lubin, Associate Professor of Law, Indiana University Maurer School of Law
Cybersecurity
3. Christopher Kuner, Professor of Law and Co-chair of the Brussels Privacy Hub, Free University of Brussels
Data and Extraterritoriality
4. Timothy Holbrook, Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs and Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Law, Emory Law
Intellectual Property
5. Marek Martyniszyn, Interim Head of School, Senior Lecturer in Law, Queen’s University Belfast Law School
Antitrust and Competition Law

Workshop #4 (10:15-11:45 am ET; 4:15-5:45 pm CET)
Moderator: Kish Parella, Professor of Law, Washington and Lee University School of Law
1. William S. Dodge, John D. Ayer Chair in Business Law and Martin Luther King Jr. Professor of Law, UC Davis School of Law
Extraterritoriality in Statutes and Regulations
2. Yanbai Andrea Wang, Assistant Professor, University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School
Judicial Extraterritoriality
3. Matthew Garrod, Senior Lecturer in Law and Associate Tutor, University of Sussex
The Expansion of Treaty-Based Extraterritorial Criminal Jurisdiction
4. Ioanna Hadjiyianni, Lecturer in Law, University of Cyprus
Environmental Law
5. Peer Zumbansen, Professor of Business Law, McGill Law
Law’s Multiple Geographies

Day Three
Friday, September 17

Workshop #5 (8:30 am-10:00 am ET; 2:30-4:00 pm CET)
Moderator: Shruti Rana, Assistant Dean for Curricular and Undergraduate Affairs and Professor of International Law Practice, Indiana University, Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies
1. Régis Bismuth, Professor, SciencesPo Law School
The European Experience
2. Danielle Ireland-Piper, Associate Professor, Bond University
Extraterritoriality in Commonwealth Nations: Common Law Perspectives from Australia, India, the United Kingdom, and New Zealand
3. Mari Takeuchi, Professor, Kobe University
Asian Experience
4. Alejandro Chehtman, Professor, University Torcuato Di Tella Law School
Extraterritoriality and Latin America
5. Cassandra Burke Robertson, John Deaver Drinko – BakerHostetler Professor of Law and Director of the Center for Professional Ethics, Case Western Reserve University School of Law
The United States Experience

Workshop #6 (10:15-11:45 am ET; 4:15-5:45 pm CET)
Moderator: Kushtrim Istrefi, Assistant Professor, Utrecht University School of Law
1. Samantha Besson, Professor, Collège de France
The Extraterritoriality of Human Rights
2. Chimène Keitner, Alfred and Hanna Fromm Professor of International Law, UC Hastings Law
The Extraterritorial Rights of Refugees
3. Sara L Seck, Associate Professor of Law, Yogis and Keddy Chair in Human Rights Law, and Associate Dean for Research, Dalhousie University
Emerging Issues and Practices
4. Ralf Michaels, Director Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law
Domestic Courts, Global Challenges
5. Austen Parrish, Dean & James H. Rudy Professor of Law, Indiana University Maurer School of Law
Sovereignty, Self-Determination, and Non-Intervention

Conference/Workshop Closing (11:45-noon ET; 5:45-6:00 pm CET)

Registration:
The Conference will be held in a workshop format and streamed as a Webinar. To register please use this link: https://iu.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_Dbe536vPRdCQMgjCJTco6w

RIDOC 2021: Call for Applications

University of Rijeka, Faculty of Law is announcing this year’s call for applications to the Rijeka Doctoral Conference: RIDOC 2021. Open to any legal or related topic od doctoral research, the conference traditionally hosts at least one session in private international law. Applications should be sent to ridoc@pravri.hr before the end of August. The conference is planned to take place on 10 December 2021 in the hybrid format, while the abstracts will be published in an e-book.

The University of Buenos Aires and the National University of Córdoba (Argentina) are organising a series of seminars entitled “New Perspectives in Private International Law” this European summer / Argentinean winter – in Spanish

The series of seminars are organised by the Ambrosio L. Gioja Research Institute of the University of Buenos Aires, the Center for Legal and Social Research of the National University of Córdoba (Argentina) and the National Council for Scientific and Technical Research (CONICET). The seminars will take place each Friday from 16 July to 27 August 2021 at 17:00 (Buenos Aires time) / 22:00 CEST time (Central European Summer Time).

The topics that will be discussed are very diverse, ranging from vaccination contracts to migration and Private International Law. The series of seminars will end on 27 August 2021 with a summary of the findings, coordinated by Candela Villegas and Luciana Scotti.

I am proud to announce that several AMEDIP members will be speaking at these seminars.

The seminars are free of charge but registration is required. Please click here to register.

Certificates of participation will be issued and certifications of approval will also be issued but only to those who prepare a final paper.

For more information, click here (Facebook page). The platform that will be used is Zoom. Any questions may be directed to seminario.gioja.cijs@gmail.com.

Out Now: Gömann on the Internal Conflict-of-Laws Regime of the GDPR

Since 2016, the European General Data Protection Regulation has been one of the most popular topics of discussion, academic and otherwise. While the PIL discussion has mostly focused on the unilateral conflicts rule in Article 3 of the Regulation, which defines its “external” scope of application, some scholars – like Martina Mantovani on this blog – have pointed out that despite providing a unified regime that applies across the Union, the Regulation’s repeated deference of specific questions to the laws of the Member States still requires a certain degree of “internal” coordination. On this aspect of the Regulation, Merlin Gömann has just published an impressive volume of over 800 pages (in German), offering what easily constitutes the most comprehensive treatment of the problem to date.

In essence, Gömann tries to work out how (and by whom) this coordination can (and must) be achieved according to primary EU law. He comes to the conclusion that the respective scopes of the national laws implementing the Regulation cannot be determined by unilateral conflict rules of the Member States but need to be derived from the Regulation itself. Accordingly, the conflict rules contained in many national laws implementing the Regulation are in violation of primary EU law (also explained in some more detail here).

According to the author, the necessary coordination between national laws must instead be achieved by applying Art. 3 GDPR by analogy. Gömann carefully explains the consequences of his proposition on more than 200 pages – including the somewhat surprising fact that national data-protection authorities might be required to apply the substantive data-protection laws of another Member State. And if this weren’t enough of an academic achievement already, Gömann concludes his book by also developing specific propositions on how the GDPR could be reformed in order to provide a proper system of coordination between the residual national laws.

Commission recommends for EU to join Hague Judgments Convention

According to a press release, the EU Commission has proposed for the EU to join the 2019 Hague Judgments Convention. So far, the Convention has been signed, but not yet ratified, by three states (Israel, Ukraine, Uruguay).

The full statement reads as follows:

International Justice: The Commission proposes for the EU to join the Hague Judgments Convention

Today, the Commission has adopted a proposal for the EU’s accession to the Hague Judgement Convention, an international treaty that facilitates the recognition and enforcement of judgements in civil and commercial matters in foreign jurisdictions. Didier Reynders, Commissioner for Justice, said: “Having one’s rights enforced in a country outside of the EU can be very cumbersome, both for private persons and for businesses. The EU joining the Hague Judgments Convention would improve legal certainty and save citizens and companies time and money. The average length of proceedings would decrease considerably.” Currently, EU citizens and businesses that want to have a judgment given in the EU to be recognised and enforced in a non-EU country face numerous legal issues due to the absence of an international framework. This legal uncertainty as well as the associated costs may cause businesses and citizens to give up on pursuing their claims or decide not to engage in international dealings altogether. The Convention on Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Judgments in Civil or Commercial Matters, adopted in July 2019, offers a comprehensive legal framework with clear rules as to the recognition and enforcement of foreign judgments. The Commission’s proposal will now have to be adopted by the Council, with the European Parliament’s consent, for the EU to join the Convention. More information on the International Cooperation on Civil Justice is available here. (For more information: Christian Wigand – Tel.: +32 229 62253; Katarzyna Kolanko – Tel.: +32 229 63444; Jördis Ferroli – Tel.: +32 229 92729)