Views
Is there a need for international conventions on legal parentage (incl. international surrogacy arrangements)?
The Experts’ Group on Parentage / Surrogacy of the Hague Conference on Private International Law (HCCH) has answered in the affirmative.
At its fifth meeting earlier this year, the Experts’ Group agreed that it would be feasible to develop both:
- a general private international law instrument on the recognition of foreign judicial decisions on legal parentage; and
- a separate protocol on the recognition of foreign judicial decisions on legal parentage arising from international surrogacy arrangements (abbreviated as “ISA”).
As announced on the HCCH website, the Experts’ Group will recommend to the governance body of the HCCH (i.e. Council on General Affairs and Policy) during its meeting in March 2019 that “work continue with a view to preparing proposals for inclusion in future instruments relating to the recognition of judicial decisions.” The Council will have the last word.
In my opinion, there are many reasons for drafting two separate instruments, which may range from legal to political as these are very sensitive topics. One that particularly struck me relates to the indirect grounds of jurisdiction when considering the recognition of such decisions:
“Most Experts concluded that the indirect grounds previously identified in the context of general legal parentage would not work in ISA cases, and instead supported the State of birth of the child as the primary connecting factor in an ISA case as this would provide certainty and predictability. A qualifier to that connecting factor (such as the habitual residence of the person giving birth to the child) might be necessary to guarantee sufficient proximity, as well as to prevent and combat trafficking of persons and law evasion.” See also para 25 of the Report.
Please note that these instruments would deal with the recognition and not with the enforcement of foreign judicial decisions given the nature of decisions on legal parentage. See in contrast my previous post on the HCCH draft Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Judgments in Civil and Commercial Matters.
The HCCH news item is available here.
The full report is available here.
Sweden: New rules on non-recognition of underage marriages
Written by Prof. Maarit Jänterä-Jareborg, Uppsala University, Sweden
On 1 January 2019, new restrictions came into force in Sweden’s private international law legislation in respect of marriages validly concluded abroad. The revised rules are found in the Act (1904:26 p. 1) on Certain International Relationships on Marriage and Guardianship, Chapter 1 § 8a, as amended by SFS 2018:1973. The content of the new legislation is, briefly, the following: no marriage shall be recognised in Sweden if the spouses or either one of them was under the age of 18 years at the time of the marriage. By way of exception, this rule may be set aside once both parties are above 18 years of age, if there are exceptional reasons to recognise the marriage. Read more
HCCH Revised Draft Explanatory Report (version of December 2018) on the Judgments Convention is available on the HCCH website
A revised Draft Explanatory Report (version of December 2018) on the HCCH Draft Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Judgments in Civil or Commercial Matters is available in both English and French on the Hague Conference website.
In my opinion, particularly complex topics in this Draft Explanatory Report include intellectual property (IP) rights (in particular, Art. 5(3) of the draft Convention– there are several provisions dealing with IP rights in addition to this Article) and the relationship of the draft Convention with other international instruments (Art. 24 of the Draft Convention). Some of the text is in square brackets, which means that such text has tentatively been inserted due perhaps to a lack of consensus at the Special Commission meetings, and thus a final decision will be taken at the Diplomatic Session scheduled for the summer 2019.
With regard to intellectual property rights, the draft Convention distinguishes between IP rights that require to be granted or registered (such as patents, registered trademarks, registered industrial designs and granted plant breeders’ rights) and those that do not require grant or registration (i.e. copyrights and related rights, unregistered trademarks, and unregistered industrial designs – this is a closed list for these specific rights). See paragraph 238 of the Draft Explanatory Report.
The draft Convention’s approach to IP rights, which is based on the territoriality principle, is set out very clearly in paragraph 235 of the Draft Explanatory Report. In particular, the draft Convention reflects a compromise according to which the State of Origin of the judgment will coincide with the lex loci protectionis i.e., the law of the State for which protection is sought, so as to avoid the application of foreign law to these rights (see also paragraph 236).
With respect to the relationship of the draft Convention with other international instruments, it is important to note that this draft Convention will cover, among many other things, non-exclusive choice of court agreements so as to give preference to the application of the HCCH Hague Convention of 30 June 2005 on Choice of Court Agreements to exclusive choice of court agreements. See paragraphs 220-225 and 410-430 of the Draft Explanatory Report.
The latest information about the Judgments Project is available here.
News
Legal Accountability of Transnational Institutions: Special Issue of the King’s Law Journal
Co-edited by Rishi Gulati and Philippa Webb, the Special Issue of the King’s Law Journal, Volume 34, Issue 3 on “The Legal Accountability of Transnational Institutions: Past, Present and Future” is now out. The 9 articles in this Special Issue are authored by leading experts on the accountability of public international organisations (IOs), MNCs, as well as NGOs.
The Introduction is open access and discusses what may be learnt by comparing the legal accountability of IOs, MNCs and NGOs. In addition to the Introductory article by Rishi Gulati and Philippa Webb, the Special Issue consists of the following contributions. Assessing the Accountability Mechanism of Multilateral Development Banks Against Access to Justice: The Case of the World Bank (Edward Chukwuemeke Okeke); Holding International Organizations Accountable: Recent Developments in U.S. Immunities Law (David P. Stewart); Protecting Human Rights in UN Peacekeeping: Operationalising Due Diligence and Accountability (Nigel D. White); Nature and Scope of an International Organisation’s Due Diligence Obligations Under International Environmental Law: A Case Study of the Caribbean Development Bank (S. Nicole Liverpool Jordan); Civil Liability Under Sustainability Due Diligence Legislation: A Quiet Revolution? (Youseph Farah, Valentine Kunuji & Avidan Kent); Accountability of NGOs: The Potential of Business and Human Rights Frameworks for NGO Due Diligence (Rosana Garciandia); Arbitrating disputes with international organisations and some access to justice issues (August Reinisch); Transnational Procedural Guarantees – The Role of Domestic Courts (Dana Burchardt).
Short-term PostDoc Position(s) at Humboldt University Berlin
The graduate resesarch programme DynamInt (Dynamic Integration Order) of Humboldt University is inviting international PostDocs to apply for a short-term (3 to 6 months), fully paid research stay in Berlin.
The PostDoc is supposed to pursue her/his research project in the field of European Law. She/he is also expected to interact with the group of young researchers, who all work on their dissertation projects within the thematic framework of harmonization and plurality tendencies in the EU
More information is available here.
Private International Law and Sustainable Development in Asia: REMINDER–Still Time to Submit Your Proposals
The United Nations Agenda 2030 with its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) seems to have a blind spot for the role of private and private international law. That blind spot is beginning to be closed. A collective volume with global outlook published in 2021 addressed “the private side of transforming our world”: each of the 17 SDGs was discussed in one chapter of the book devoted to the specific relevance of private law and private international law. In 2022, the IACL-ASADIP conference in Asunción, Paraguay discussed sustainable private international law with regard to Latin America; the contributions published in 2023 in a special issue of the University of Brasilia Law Journal – Direito.UnB., V.7., N.3 (2023).
In this occasion the focus is on Asia. The Chinese Journal of Transnational Law invites submissions for its Vol. 2 Issue 2, to be published in 2025, engaging critically with the functions, methodologies and techniques of private international law in relation to sustainability from an Asian perspective, as well as in relation to the actual and potential contributions of private international law to the SDGs in Asia. Read more