Views
Regulating International Organisations: What Role for Private International Law?
Written by Dr Rishi Gulati, LSE Fellow in Law, London School of Economics; Barrister, Victorian Bar, Australia
The regulation of public international organisations (IOs) has been brought into sharp focus following the landmark US Supreme Court ruling in Jam v International Finance Corporation586 US (2019) (Jam). Jam is remarkable because the virtually absolute immunities enjoyed by some important IOs have now been limited in the US (where several IOs are based), giving some hope that access to justice for the victims of institutional action may finally become a reality. Jam has no doubt reinvigorated the debate about the regulation of IOs. This post calls for private international law to play its part in that broader debate. After briefly setting out the decision in Jam, a call for a greater role for private international law in the governance of IOs is made. Read more
Viewing the “Arrangement Concerning Mutual Assistance in Court-ordered Interim Measures in Aid of Arbitral Proceedings by the Courts of the Mainland and of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region” as a Window onto the New Legal Hubs
Written by Matthew S. Erie, Associate Professor of Modern Chinese Studies and Fellow at St. Cross College, University of Oxford
On April 2, 2019, the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (“HKSAR”) and the Supreme People’s Court of the People’s Republic of China” (“Supreme People’s Court”) signed an Arrangement Concerning Mutual Assistance in Court-ordered Interim Measures in Aid of Arbitral Proceedings by the Courts of the Mainland and of the HKSAR (hereinafter, “the Arrangement Concerning Mutual Assistance,” see English translation here). This is a momentous development in the growth of international commercial arbitration in both mainland China (also, the “PRC”) and Hong Kong as it is the first time that such a mechanism has been put in place to allow Chinese courts to render interim relief to support arbitrations seated outside of the PRC. Read more
Interpreting Forum Selection Clauses
Written by John Coyle, the Reef C. Ivey II Term Professor of Law, Associate Professor of Law at the University of North Carolina School of Law
Last week, I wrote about the interpretive rules that U.S. courts use to construe ambiguous choice-of-law clauses. Choice-of-law clauses are not, however, the only means by which contracting parties may exercise their autonomy under the rules of private international law. Parties may also select via contract the forum in which their disputes will be resolved. In the United States, these contractual provisions are generally known as forum selection clauses. Elsewhere in the world, such provisions are generally known as choice-of-court clauses. Since this post is largely focused on U.S. practice, I utilize the former term. Read more
News
Out Now: Fabrizio Marrella, “Diritto del commercio internazionale / International Business Law”, 3rd edition 2023
The third edition of Fabrizio Marrella’s textbook on international business law has recently published by Wolters Kluwers/Cedam.
The author (Vice-Rector and Chair of International Law at “Cà Foscari” University of Venice, Italy) has kindly provided the following summary for our readers:
After an historical introduction and a clear systematic analysis of key actors and sources of International Business Law, the book focuses on transnational contracts and commercial relationships of companies by deepening international sales (including the first applications of Incoterms ® 2020), contracts of international transport, insurance, commercial distribution, payments and bank guarantees. The leading methodology used by the Author is that of private international law and best operational practices.
The book also sets out the regulation of foreign direct investment in the light of the latest new regulatory and case-law developments. In the final part, the work examines, in one section, ADR mechanisms together with international arbitration and, in the final section, the most relevant international civil procedure rules for businesses.
The book can be found at the publisher’s website here.
Dutch Journal of PIL (NIPR) – issue 2023/2
The latest issue of the Dutch Journal on Private International Law (NIPR) has been published.
NIPR 2023 issue 2
Editorial
C.G. van der Plas / p. 197
Articles
K.C. Henckel, Issues of conflicting laws – a closer look at the EU’s approach to artificial intelligence / p. 199-226
Abstract
While newly emerging technologies, such as Artificial intelligence (AI), have a huge potential for improving our daily lives, they also possess the ability to cause harm. As part of its AI approach, the European Union has proposed several legislative acts aiming to accommodate and ensure the trustworthiness of AI. This article discusses the potential private international law impact of these legislative proposals. In doing so, it – inter alia – addresses how the newly proposed legislative acts interact with existing private international law instruments, such as the Rome II Regulation. In addition, it questions whether there is a need for specific rules on the private international law of AI.
Out Now: Interim Measures in Cross-Border Civil and Commercial Disputes
A new volume by Deyan Draguiev on Interim Measures in Cross-Border Civil and Commercial Disputes, based on his PhD thesis supervised by Peter Mankowski, has just been published with Springer.
The blurb reads as follows:
The book focusses on applying a holistic overview of interim measures and associated procedures in the context of cross-border private law (civil and commercial) disputes that are the subject of international litigation and arbitration proceedings. It reexamines key features of said problem and outlines novel findings on interim relief in the area of international dispute resolution. The book analyses the rules of EU law (EU law regulations such as the Regulation Brussels Ibis and the rest of the Brussels regime) as the single system of cross-border jurisdictional rules, as well as the rules of international arbitration (both commercial and investment). In the process, it conducts a complete mapping of interim measures problems and explores the criteria for granting relief under national laws. For this purpose, it includes an extensive comparative law overview of many jurisdictions in Europe, Asia, Africa, the Americas, etc., to reveal common standards for granting interim relief.
Interim relief is a salient problem in dispute resolution, and serious international disputes usually require requests for such measures. This makes a more complete understanding all the more important. For scholars and practitioners alike, there are various ways to seek relief; precisely this complexity calls for a more complex and multilayered analysis, which does not (as is usually the case) adopt the perspective of either litigation or arbitration, but instead weighs the pros and cons and considers the viability and reliability of the different options, viewed from all angles.