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Choice of law in commercial contracts and regulatory competition: new steps to be made by the EU?
The recently published study titled ‘European Commercial Contract Law’, authored by Andrea Bertolini, addresses the theme of regulatory competition. It offers new policy recommendations to improve EU legal systems’ chances of being chosen as the law governing commercial contracts.
The Study’s main question
The European Parliament’s Committee on Legal Affairs has published a new study authored by Andrea Bertolini, titled ‘European Commercial Contract Law’ (the ‘Study’). The Study formulates the main question as follows: ‘why the law chosen in commercial contracts is largely non-European and non-member state law’. The expression ‘non-European and non-member state’ law is specified as denoting the legal systems of England and Wales, the United States, and Singapore, and more generally, common law legal systems. The Study states:
It is easily observed how most often international contracts are governed by non-European law. The reasons why this occurs are up to debate and could be quite varied both in nature and relevance. Indeed, a recent study by Singapore Academy of Law (SAL) found that 43 per cent of commercial practitioners and in-house counsel preferred English law as the governing law of the contracts. Read more
Financial Hardship and Forum Selection Clauses
The U.S. Supreme Court has long held that a forum selection clause should not be enforced when “trial in the contractual forum will be so gravely difficult and inconvenient” that the plaintiff “will for all practical purposes be deprived of his day in court.” The financial status of the plaintiff is obviously a factor that should be considered as part of this inquiry. Large corporations can usually afford to litigate cases in distant courts. Individual plaintiffs frequently lack the resources to do so. Nevertheless, the lower federal courts in the United States have repeatedly held that financial hardship on the part of the plaintiff is not enough to make an otherwise valid forum selection clause unenforceable. Read more
Revised Canadian Statute on Judgment Enforcement
Two years ago, the Uniform Law Conference of Canada (ULCC) released a revised version of the Court Jurisdiction and Proceedings Transfer Act (CJPTA), model legislation putting the taking of jurisdiction and staying of proceedings on a statutory footing. The statute is available here.
The ULCC has now released a revised version of another model statute, the Enforcement of Canadian Judgments Act (ECJA). The original version of this statute was prepared in 1998 and had been amended four times. It has now been consolidated and substantially revised. It is available here and background information is available here and here.
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Call for papers: 3rd Postgraduate Law Conference of the Centre for Private International Law and Transnational Governance (Aberdeen)
The Centre for Private International Law and Transnational Governance of the University of Aberdeen is pleased to announce that it is now accepting submissions for the 3rd Postgraduate Law Conference of the Centre for Private International Law which will take place online on 6 June 2025.
Conference Theme: New Dimensions in Private International Law Read more
Chinese International Lawyers Bulletin: Call for Submissions
With the trend of globalization, legal exchange and cooperation, even competition and conflict between nations have become the norm. The demand for legal services in cross-border investment, international trade, and transnational dispute resolution is also sharply on the rise. As the world’s second-largest economy, China’s legal system is playing an increasingly significant role in cross-border legal services. However, the international legal community generally does not have much understanding of China’s foreign-related legal system and practice. There is a need for a platform that can, systematically and timely, provide information for the Chinese foreign-related legal development including updating China’s foreign-related legal policy, explaining the making and amending of relevant Chinese laws and reporting Chinese foreign-related cases etc. Read more
ILA Committee on Conflict-of-Laws Issues in International Arbitration: First Webinar on 18 February 2025
This post was written by Lukas Petschning, University of Vienna.
Conflict of laws is one of the most complex and disputed subject areas in international arbitration. An abundance of academic works has examined the issue and proposed widely diverging solutions. Yet, these studies frequently focus on isolated issues and lack overall consistency. Equally, they are often overly theoretical, lacking practical guidance useful to the average arbitrator or judge.
Forging a path toward more legal certainty, the International Law Association has established a new Committee on Conflict-of-Laws Issues in International Arbitration. It is chaired by Dr Nikolaus Pitkowitz and Ms Wendy Lin, with Professor Matthias Lehmann and Dr Mariel Dimsey acting as co-rapporteurs.