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How many monetary judgments that Chinese courts decided to enforce are successfully enforced?
It is necessary to distinguish (1) a court’s decision to acknowledge the validity of a foreign judgment (judgment recognition and enforcement), and (1) whether a judgment creditor successfully recovers the awarded amount in practice.
Insights and Future Directions of PIL Based on the 2024 Online Summer Courses at The Hague Academy of International Law
By Birgit van Houtert, Assistant Professor of Private International Law at Maastricht University
From 29 July till 16 Augustus 2024, the Summer Courses on Private International Law (PIL) were held at the 93rd session of the summer courses of the Hague Academy of International Law. The PIL courses were followed by 250 onsite attendees and remotely 61 attendees from 74 different countries. The inaugural lecture was presented by Lord Lawrence Collins of Mapesbury (Former Justice at the United Kingdom Supreme Court) on the “Use and Abuse of Comity in International Litigation”. In the next three weeks, the general course was given by Charalambos Pamboukis (Professor at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens) titled “The Metamorphoses of Private International Law”. During these three weeks, six special courses were given by Alessandra Zanobetti (Professor at the University of Bologna) on “The Effects of Economic Sanctions and Counter-Measures on Private Legal Relationships”; Natalie Y. Morris-Sharma (Director at the Attorney-General’s Chambers of Singapore) on “The Singapore Convention and the International Law of Mediation”; Carlos Esplugues Mota (Professor at the University of Valencia) on “New Dimensions in the Application of Foreign Law by Courts (and Arbitrators) and Non-judicial Authorities”; Jack Coe (Professor at Pepperdine Caruso School of Law) on “Non-ICSID Convention Investor-State Awards in Domestic Courts”; Eva Lein (Professor at the University of Lausanne) on “Breathing Space in International Commercial Litigation”; Andrew Dickinson (Professor at the University of Oxford) on “Natural Justice in Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Judgements”. These PIL experts provided very interesting and valuable insights, including future (desirable) directions on PIL that can guide and inspire students, researchers, legal practitioners, courts, and legislators. The courses will be published by Brill in the series Collected Courses of The Hague Academy of International Law / Recueil des cours de l’Académie de La Haye. The fact that the courses commonly focused on PIL globally, by including national, regional and international PIL, is particularly laudable in view of our interconnected world. This blog aims to describe common threads of the 2024 Online Summer Courses on PIL that may encourage you to read the Hague Academy Collected Courses and inspire further research.[1]
The Public Law-Private Law Divide and Access to Frozen Russian Assets
By Csongor István Nagy, Professor of Law at the University of Galway, Ireland, and at the University of Szeged, Hungary, and research professor at the HUN-REN Center for Social Sciences, Hungary.
The overwhelming majority of the international community condemned Russia’s war against Ukraine as a gross violation of international law and several countries introduced unilateral measures freezing Russian assets. It has been argued that countries should go beyond that and use these assets for the indemnification of Ukrainian war damages. Confiscation would, however, be unprecedented and raise serious international law concerns. While states have, with good reason, been reluctant to react to one wrongful act with another, this question has given rise to intensive debate. Recently, the EU authorized the use of net profits from the frozen assets but not the assets themselves to support Ukraine.
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Call for Papers: The Role of Judicial Actors in Shaping Private International Law. A Comparative Perspective
On the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the Swiss Federal Tribunal, the Swiss Institute of Comparative Law (SICD) is pleased to announce its 35th Conference on Private International Law, to be held on 19–20 November 2025 in Lausanne.
The conference addresses how courts, lawyers, and litigants have shaped—and how they continue to shape—private international law. Special emphasis will be placed on how legal practice drives the development of private international law at both the national and supranational levels. Judges, through landmark rulings, have clarified conflicts of laws rules, set precedents on the recognition of foreign judgments, and adapted legal frameworks to globalization and digital commerce. Lawyers, by crafting novel arguments, have influenced judicial reasoning and contributed to evolving legal doctrines. Finally, strategic litigation, led by litigants and advocacy groups, has driven major jurisprudential shifts, particularly in fundamental rights, corporate liability, and cross-border regulation. The conference will analyse these actors’ distinct but interconnected roles in shaping contemporary private international law.
We invite scholars (both established and early-career researchers), legal practitioners, and policymakers to submit papers addressing these issues.
Possible topics include:
- The role of national and supranational courts in shaping private international law
- The impact of key judicial decisions on cross-border legal relationships
- The influence of legal practitioners in driving jurisprudential change
- Strategic litigation as a tool for legal evolution in private international law
- Comparative approaches to judicial reasoning in international private law cases
- Judicial responses to global challenges such as migration, digital commerce, corporate responsibility, and human rights protection
Paper Submission
Please submit an abstract (up to 500 words) of your proposed paper by 11 May 2025 to Ms. Marie-Laure Lauria (marie-laure.lauria@isdc-dfjp.unil.ch), with the subject line “ISDC 35th PIL Conference Submission“. Abstracts may be submitted in English, German, or French.
All submissions will undergo a double-blind peer review and decisions will be communicated by 3 June 2025. Accepted papers will be considered for publication in an edited volume or a special journal issue.
Organization
The conference will be hosted by the Swiss Institute of Comparative Law.
Funding
The Swiss Institute of Comparative Law will provide funding for the travel costs and accommodation of all presenters.
Crossroads in Private International Law Seminar Series, University of Aberdeen
In April, the Aberdeen Centre for Private International Law and Transnational Governance will be relaunching its Crossroads in Private International Law research seminar series. 
It will feature both online and hybrid events.
Out Now: Dominelli, Regolamento Bruxelles I bis e US jurisdiction in personam
Stefano Dominelli (Università di Genova) has just published a book titled Regolamento Bruxelles I bis e US jurisdiction in personam: riflessioni e proposte su condivisioni valoriali, influenze e osmosi di metodi with Editoriale Scientifica. The book is written in Italian but also features conclusions in English.
The author has kindly shared the following summary with us:
The book analyses the basic principles of the EU’ and US international civil procedure in contract and tort law. The investigation shows how both systems are partly inconsistent with their respective premises – of legal certainty, on the one hand, and fairness and justice, on the other. The juxtaposition of the dogmatic approaches and their contextualisation in the light of the law in action makes it possible to reconstruct a common and shared principle which shapes solutions in both systems – that of the necessary existence of a minimum connection between the jurisdiction and the case. This conclusion opens up, to a limited extent, to a conceptual rapprochement between legal systems and to reflections on possible legal transplants that respect the characteristics of the local legal culture.
The whole book is available open access under this link.