Views
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
Deadline Extended! The Private Side of Transforming the World – UN Sustainable Development Goals 2030 and the Role of Private International Law
Outline and Call for Papers
Update!
The planned public conference has to be postponed due to the Covid-19 pandemic and will now take place at the Max Planck Institute in Hamburg on September 9-11 2021, one year later than originally announced.
On September 10-11 2020, we will instead hold a closed online workshop among the project participants in order to feedback on the draft papers.
Deadline extended: May 17!
On 25 September 2015 the UN General Assembly unanimously adopted the Resolution Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The core of the Resolution consists of 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) with 169 associated targets, and many more indicators. The SDGs build on the earlier UN Millennium Development Goals, “continuing development priorities such as poverty eradication, health, education and food security and nutrition”. Yet, going “far beyond” the MDGs, they “[set] out a wide range of economic, social and environmental objectives”. The SDGs add new targets, such as migration (8.8; 10.7), the rule of law and access to justice (16.3), legal identity and birth registration (16.9), and multiple “green” goals. And, more than the MDGs, they emphasize sustainability.
The SDGs have attracted significant attention. Although not undisputed – for example, regarding their assumption that economic growth may be decoupled from environmental degradation, and their lack of attention to the concerns of indigenous people – the SDGs have become a focal point for comprehensive thinking about the future of the world. This is so at least in the area of public law and public international law. With regard to private law, by contrast, there has been less attention, although the SDGs are directed not only to governments and parliaments, the UN and other international institutions, but also to “local authorities, indigenous peoples, civil society, business and the private sector, the scientific and academic community – and all people”.
Certainly, public action and public law will not be enough if the goals are to be achieved. Even a spurious stroll through the SDGs demonstrates interplay with private international law (PIL). The SDGs name goals regarding personal status and family relations: “By 2030, provide legal identity for all, including birth registration” (16.9), or “Eliminate… forced marriage…”(5.3), both well-known themes of PIL. The SDGs focus on trade and thereby invoke contract law in multiple ways. On the one hand, they encourage freedom of contract when they call to “correct and prevent trade restrictions and distortions in world agricultural markets”… (2.b) or “promote the development, transfer, dissemination and diffusion of environmentally sound technologies to developing countries on favourable terms… as mutually agreed” (17.7). On the other hand, they insist on restrictions, for example, the “immediate and effective” eradication of forced labour, “modern slavery” and child trafficking ((8.7, 16.2); “by 2030 significantly reduce illicit financial and arms flows”…(16.4); “substantially reduce corruption and bribery in all their forms” (16.5). There is clearly also a role for tort law, including its application to cross-border situations, for example in order to fulfill goals regarding environmental protection and climate change.
Other targets concern not substantive private law, but civil procedure. Thus, the call to “ensure equal access to justice for all” (16.3) has traditionally been confined to equal treatment within one legal system. But as a global goal it invokes global equality: for instance, the ability for European victims of the Volkswagen Diesel scandal to access courts like US victims, the access to court of Latin American victims of oil pollution on a similar level to those in Alaska, and so forth. All of this has multiple implications in the sphere of cross-border civil procedure: the admissibility of global class actions and public interest actions, judicial jurisdiction and recognition and enforcement of judgments concerning corporate social and environmental responsibility, and so on.
Finally, the SDGs have an institutional component. SDG 16 calls, among others, for “strong institutions,” and it encourages cooperation. What comes into focus here, from a private international law perspective, are institutions like the Hague Conference and treaties like the Hague Conventions, but also other possible instruments of cooperation and institutionalization in the private international law realm.
All this suggests that there are plenty of reasons to examine the relationship between the SDGs and PIL. And since the 2030 Agenda explicitly calls on the private sector and the academic world to cooperate for its implementation, and time is running fast, such an examination is also timely, indeed urgent. With this in mind, Ralf Michaels, Verónica Ruiz Abou-Nigm and Hans van Loon are organizing a conference at the Max Planck Institute in Hamburg on 10-12 September 2020. Speakers will systematically analyze the actual and potential role of Private International Law for each of the seventeen SDGs. The overall purpose is twofold:
(1) to raise awareness of the relations between the SDGs and private international law as it already exists around the world. Private international law is sometimes thought to deal with small, marginal issues. It will be important, for those inside and outside the discipline alike, to generate further awareness of how closely its tools and instruments, its methods and institutions, and its methodologies and techniques, are linked to the greatest challenges of our time.
(2) to explore the potential need and possibilities for private international law to respond to these challenges and to come up with concrete suggestions for adjustments, new orientations and regional or global projects. This exploration can aim to identify the need for further and/or new research agendas in specific fields; the development of new mechanisms and approaches, the usefulness of new international cooperation instruments, be it new Conventions at the Hague Conference or elsewhere, or be it new institutions.
Call for Papers
Submission deadline: May 17, 2019.
We are inviting contributions to this project. Interested applicants should submit the application by May 17, 2019. We ask you to identify which of the 17 development goals you want to address, which (if any) work you have already done in that area, and, in a few paragraphs (up to a maximum of 500 words), what you intend to focus on. We plan to select participants and invite them by the end of May 2019. Selected participants would be expected to come to Hamburg to present research findings in the conference, and to provide a full draft paper by the end of June 2020 (in advance of the conference), for discussion and subsequent publication as part of an edited collection to be published after the conference. We expect to be able to fund all travel and accommodation costs. If you are interested, please send your brief application to Britta Arp (@sekretariat-michaels@mpipriv.de) in Hamburg. Please title your email “SDG2030 and PIL,” and your document “SDG2030 and PIL_lastname”. We look forward to hearing from you.
Ralf Michaels, Director, Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law, Hamburg;
Verónica Ruiz Abou-Nigm, Senior Lecturer in International Private Law, University of Edinburgh;
Hans van Loon, former Secretary General of the Hague Conference.
News
Foreign law in the Draft Code of French Private International Law: New volume in French
Gustavo Cerqueira and Hugues Fulchiron have recently edited a new volume (in French) on the appliation of foreign law in the draft code of French private international law (Le droit étranger dans le projet de code de droit international privé – Connaissance et applicationdroit). They have kindly provided us with the following English summary:
On the occasion of the public consultation on the draft code of French private international law launched by the Ministry of Justice on 8 June 2022, the Société de législation comparée organized a debate in Paris on 13 September of the same year on the provisions relating to the knowledge and application of foreign law – Articles 13 and 14 of the draft.
Between consolidation of case law, methodological clarification, new procedural perspectives and recourse to institutional cooperation, the choices made by the drafters of the proposed Code offered a great opportunity for collective reflection, bringing together the key players in the field. This reflection was all the timelier given that these provisions were not given particular attention either in the explanatory memorandum to the draft code or in the commentaries on the draft code by academic writers.
The purpose of this book is therefore to bring to public debate the most salient issues relating to this often-neglected chapter of conflict of laws, while at the same time putting forward singular proposals to ensure that the content of foreign law in France is established as accurate as possible.
In recent years, the Société de législation comparée has taken an interest in the issue of understanding and applying foreign law. Through this new initiative, the Société works to enhance French private international law, in line with the goals set out in Article 1 of its Articles of Association.
Certificat de coutume: New volume in French
Gustavo Cerqueira, Nicolas Nord, and Cyril Nourissat have recently edited a new volume on the “Certificat de coutume – Pratiques en droit des affaires internationales” (in French). The editors have kindly provided us with an English translation of the blurb available on the publisher’s website:
Read more
Seminar series Crossroads in Private International Law
The Centre for Private international Law of the University of Aberdeen’s Law School is continuing this year its series on Crossroads in Private International Law.
The aim of the series is to explore the intersection between Private International Law and substantive areas of law, with the outcome of featuring cutting edge interdisciplinary research carried out by the Centre members.
The format is hybrid, with presentations and room for discussion. Find out more and register for the individual events here; and sign up for selected seminars of for the entire series here.