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33rd Annual Survey of American Choice-of-Law Cases
The Annual Survey of American Choice-of-Law Cases for 2019, now in its 33rd year, has been posted on SSRN. A summary of the contents is reproduced below. If you are interested in the Survey, you can download it here
Here is the abstract:
This is the Thirty-Third Survey of American Choice-of-Law Cases. It was written at the request of the Association of American Law Schools Section on Conflict of Laws. It is intended as a service to fellow teachers and to students of conflicts law, both inside and outside of the United States. Its purpose remains the same as it has been in the previous 32 years: to inform, rather than to advocate.
This Survey covers cases decided by American state and federal appellate courts during 2019 and posted on Westlaw by December 31, 2019. Of the 1,404 appellate cases that meet these parameters, the Survey focuses on those cases that may contribute something new to the development or understanding of conflicts law—and in particular choice of law.
The Survey proceeds in four parts. The first describes fourteen cases decided by the United States Supreme Court. The second part discusses judgments delineating the reach of federal law in cases with foreign elements (extraterritoriality). The third part focuses on the choice-of-law part of conflicts law, in both interstate and international cases. The fourth part deals with the recognition of sister state and foreign country judgments, as well as domestic and international arbitral awards.
New Articles on Private International Law From Professor Ronald Brand
Professor Ronald A. Brand of the University of Pittsburgh School of Law has posted three new articles with private international law content:
This chapter was prepared from a presentation given by the author at the 2019 Summer School in Transnational Commercial Law & Technology, jointly sponsored by the University of Verona School of Law and the Center for International Legal Education (CILE) of the University of Pittsburgh School of Law. The paper reviews the domestic and international progress of online dispute resolution with a particular focus on the negotiations that led to the 2017 UNCITRAL Technical Notes on Online Dispute Resolution
Of Magnets and Centrifuges: The US and EU Federal Systems and Private International Law
This chapter is part of a tribute to Professor Alberta Sbragia upon her retirement at the University of Pittsburgh, and considers federal systems in the United States and the European Union as viewed through the lens of private international law. While some may be hesitant to refer to the European Union as a “federal” system, when viewed in the context of private international law, the author presents the EU system is both more centralized and more predictably developed than is its counterpart in the United States. By tracing his personal experience over 25 years at the Hague Conference on Private International Law, the author reviews the developments which have led to centralization of private international law within the European Union, considers how the federal system in each of the United States and the European Union has influenced this area of the law, and draws conclusions about how each has used its own federal approach in this area of the law to influence global development of the law.
This article will be published as part of a special issue of the Netherlands International Law Review dedicated to the 2019 HCCH Judgments Convention. The article begins with the context in which a Hague Convention on Jurisdiction and the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Judgments was first proposed in 1992. It then traces the history of the Hague negotiations, both from within those negotiations and in regard to important developments outside the negotiations, through the completion of the 2005 Convention on Choice of Court Agreements and the 2019 Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Judgments in Civil or Commercial Matters. The article ends with comments on whether it is advisable to now resume discussion of a separate convention on direct jurisdiction.
Happy New Year to our CoL Readers
The Editorial Team of CoL wishes all of you a Happy New Year! We will continue trying our best to keep you posted on conflict of law views and news from around the world.
A first moment of interest might be on Tuesday 14/01/2020, 09:30 CET. According to the Judicial Calendar of the European Court of Justice, Advocate General Maciej Szpunar will deliver his Opinion on the Request for a preliminary ruling from the Tribunale di Genova (Italy) lodged on 12 October 2018 — LG and Others v Rina S.p.A. and Ente Registro Italiano Navale (Case C-641/18).
The question referred to the ECJ relates to the application of the Brussels I Regulation and it reads (OJ C-25/18 of 21 January 2019):
Should Articles 1(1) and 2(1) of Regulation (EC) No 44/2001 (1) of 22 December 2000 be interpreted — particularly in the light of Article 47 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, Article 6(1) of the European Convention on Human Rights and recital 16 of Directive 2009/15/EC (2) — as preventing a court of a Member State from waiving its jurisdiction by granting jurisdictional immunity to private entities and legal persons carrying out classification and/or certification activities, established in that Member State, in respect of the performance of those classification and/or certification activities on behalf of a non-EU State, in a dispute concerning compensation for death and personal injury caused by the sinking of a passenger ferry and liability for negligent conduct?
As is explained in the Request for the Preliminary Ruling
[T]he applicants — relatives of the victims and survivors of the sinking of the Al Salam Boccaccio ’98 ferry in the Red Sea on 2 and 3 February 2006, in which more than 1 000 people lost their lives — filed a lawsuit against the defendants seeking a judgment on their collective and/or joint and several civil liability for all pecuniary and non-pecuniary losses suffered as a result of the disaster in jure proprio or jure successionis and, as a result, the award of compensation in respect of those losses. The applicants submit that the defendants acted negligently when carrying out their classification and certification activities and when adopting decisions and guidelines, thereby rendering the vessel unstable and unsafe and causing it to sink.
The defendants entered an appearance […], challenging the applicants’ claims on various grounds, including in particular — with regard to the present proceedings — the defendants’ immunity from Italian jurisdiction. Briefly, that plea is based on the fact that RINA S.p.A. and RINA ENTE were summonsed in relation to activities carried out as delegates of a foreign sovereign State, the Republic of Panama. Those activities were an expression of the sovereign prerogatives of that delegating foreign State, in whose name and in whose interest the defendants acted.
We will keep you posted…