Views
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.
Tesseract: Don’t Over-React! The High Court of Australia, Proportionate Liability, Arbitration, and Private International Law
By Dr Benjamin Hayward
Associate Professor, Department of Business Law and Taxation, Monash Business School
X: @LawGuyPI, @MonashITICL
On 7 August 2024, the High Court of Australia handed down its long-awaited decision in Tesseract International Pty Ltd v Pascale Construction Pty Ltd [2024] HCA 24. The dispute arose out of a domestic commercial arbitration seated in South Australia, where the Commercial Arbitration Act 2011 (SA) is the relevant lex arbitri. That Act is a domestically focused adaptation of the UNCITRAL Model Law on International Commercial Arbitration (with its 2006 amendments).
The respondent to the arbitration sought to rely upon proportionate liability legislation found in the Law Reform (Contributory Negligence and Apportionment of Liability) Act 2001 (SA) and in the Competition and Consumer Act 2010 (Cth). The High Court was asked to determine whether those proportionate liability regimes could be applied in the arbitration. A very practical difficulty arose here, reflected in Steward J noting (in dissent) that the High Court was ‘faced with an invidious choice’: see [228]. Were the proportionate liability laws not to apply in the arbitration, the respondent might find themselves liable for 100% of the applicant’s loss, when they would not be liable to that same extent in court proceedings applying the same body of South Australian law. But were the proportionate liability laws to apply, the applicant might find themselves able to recover only a portion of their loss in the arbitration, and might then have to then pursue court proceedings against another third party wrongdoer to recover the rest: given that joinder is not possible in arbitration without consent. Read more
News
Changes to the Editorial Board
We are delighted to announce that Wilson Lui will be joining our Editorial Board. Wilson holds degrees from the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge, the Chinese University of Hong Kong and the University of Hong Kong. He currently teaches at the University of Hong Kong while working towards his PhD at the University of Melbourne. His many publications include a comprehensive volume on the conflict of laws in Hong Kong, Hong Kong Private International Law (Hart 2025; together with Anselmo Reyes).
At the same time, we are sad to see Samuel Fulli-Lemaire (Université de Strasbourg), David P. Stewart (Georgetown University), and Marlene Wethmar-Lemmer (University of South Africa) retire from the blog after years of service to this project – we are all the more grateful for their contributions and wish them all the best.
Revue Critique de droit international privé – Issue 2025/2
Written by Hadrien Pauchard (assistant researcher and doctoral student at Sciences Po Law School)
The second issue of the Revue Critique de droit international privé of 2025 has just been released. It contains four articles, seven case notes and numerous book reviews. In line with the Revue Critique’s recent policy, the doctrinal part will soon be made available in English on the editor’s website (for registered users and institutions). Read more
Out Now: Gössl/Kienle, Grundkurs Internationales Privat- und Zivilverfahrensrecht
Any student of German private international law will take delight in the news that a new textbook has just been published by our co-editor Susanne Goessl together with Florian Kienle. The book covers questions of both the applicable law (internationales Privatrecht) and of jurisdiction and foreign judgments (internationales Zivilverfahrensrecht), with a certain focus on the former area. As one might expect from a new text, it puts the European instruments of private international law (and the areas governed by them) into the centre (pp. 16–144) – without neglecting the areas that remain governed by domestic law (pp. 145–282).
Readers looking to familiarize themselves with German PIL will appreciate the concise introduction to the field (pp. 1–15), the comprehensive coverage of fundamental questions (such as renvoi, characterisation, etc.; starting at p. 157), and the revision questions provided at the end of each chapter. Above all else, however, they will notice the many topical examples used by the authors to explain the material, ranging from climate change and human rights litigation to Covid, the Volkswagen emissions scandal, and the 2021 Suez Canal obstruction by the Ever Given. The wealth of these examples alone makes the book a great read even for those who may consider themselves already well acquainted with German PIL (not least if they need to teach it).
More information on the book is available here.