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Delhi High Court Grants Rare Anti-Enforcement Injunction: Implications for International Disputes
By Ananya Bhargava, Jindal Global Law School, OP Jindal Global University, India.
Recently, the Delhi High Court in the case of Honasa Consumer Limited v RSM General Trading LLC granted an anti-enforcement injunction against the execution proceedings instituted in the Dubai Court on the ground that it threatened the arbitral process in India. The Court deemed the proceedings before the Dubai Court as an attempt to frustrate a possible arbitration envisaged by the contract between the parties. The injunction was granted under S.9 of the Indian Arbitration and Conciliation Act 1996 as an “interim measure.” This is a significant turning point in the intersection of arbitration and cross-border litigation in India since the remedy of anti-enforcement injunction is rarely granted by judicial authorities across jurisdictions.
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]
News
RabelsZ 89 (2025): Issue 4
The latest issue of RabelsZ has just been released. The table of contents is available here. All content is Open Access: CC BY 4.0. More recent articles and book reviews are available Online First.
ESSAYS
Anne Röthel, Debatten über das Vergleichen. Wanderungen zwischen Rechtsvergleichung und Komparatistik [Debates about Comparison. Journeys between Comparative Law and Comparative Literature], pp 615–647, https://doi.org/10.1628/rabelsZ-2025-0060
Many academic fields look to comparative methods in pursuit of insight, with scholars debating how to proceed and what they hope to learn from the comparison. This article explores what comparative law stands to gain from interdisciplinary dialog with other fields of comparative inquiry. By way of example, it evaluates the potential gain from several journeys into the field of comparative literature. At first, these journeys back and forth between disciplines reveal a number of parallels: a striking resemblance between each field’s narrative of its own becoming; both fields’ exposure to fundamental criticisms; both fields ethicizing along similar trajectories; each one’s encounter with related dilemmas. At the same time, these journeys into comparative literature reveal implicit hierarchies and orientations in comparative law. But these cursory journeys through the history of comparative literature also counsel that comparative law would do well to avoid letting its own debates over the direction of the field veer into polarization and name-calling, into a kind of struggle that is mostly unwinnable and unproductive.
João Costa-Neto, João Guilherme Sarmento, From Roman Marriage to Unmarried Unions.
Defining the Requirements for de facto and Registered Partnerships, pp. 648–682, https://doi.org/10.1628/rabelsZ-2025-0059
This study examines the historical and comparative evolution of family law, tracing the transition from Roman marriage to contemporary partnerships. The article explores how Roman law conceptualised marriage as a social institution based on affectio maritalis, detailing its transformation through Christian doctrine into an indissoluble sacrament and its subsequent adaptation within modern legal systems. By analysing legal frameworks in Germany, Italy, France, England, and Brazil, the inquiry highlights the varying degrees of recognition granted to unmarried unions, from informal cohabitation to registered partnerships. The comparative analysis reveals the dynamic interplay between tradition, societal norms, and legal evolution, underscoring how distinct legal systems balance autonomy and protection in family law. This work contributes to the broader discourse on the harmonisation of family law and the impact of evolving societal values on legal institutions.
Tom Hick, Claiming Back Anticipatory Performance after Failed Negotiations.
A Comparative Analysis of Alternatives to Precontractual Liability, pp. 683–713, https://doi.org/10.1628/rabelsZ-2025-0049
As a matter of principle, breaking-off negotiations or refusing a contract offer are lawful actions. For based on freedom of contract, each individual is free to contract, free to choose one’s counterpart and the content of the contract, and equally free not to contract. Only exceptionally can a party be held liable for breaking-off negotiations based on wrongful conduct. Hence, it appears worthwhile to look for alternative approaches to recover fruitlessly incurred costs in the context of negotiations that failed independently of any wrongful conduct. Undue payment offers precisely this possibility. Therefore, the present contribution offers an exploratory look at the chances of success of an action for undue payment to recover costs incurred in the context of failed contract negotiations in Belgium, France, the Netherlands, and Germany. The paper finds that in those cases where fruitlessly incurred costs technically qualify as a payment in the respective national legal system, the prospects for the party seeking to recover these costs are surprisingly positive.
Derwis Dilek, Sebastian Omlor, Dominik Skauradszun, A New Private International Law for Digital Assets, pp. 714–742, https://doi.org/10.1628/rabelsZ-2025-0053
The increasing popularity of digital assets presents significant challenges for private international law, as fundamental conflict-of-laws rules concerning proprietary issues are often absent. This article outlines a possible approach to a technologically neutral and function-based conflict-of-laws framework. Taking existing instruments into account, it examines in particular the role of party autonomy through a choice-of-law rule, as well as alternative connecting factors based on structural, functional, or factual links between digital assets and legal systems. Building on this, the article proposes a conflict-of-laws framework for determining the law applicable to proprietary issues. This framework is designed to be applicable to various types of digital assets, including those based on decentralized networks. The proposed draft rule combines an express choice-of-law option with a multi-layered system of objective connecting factors and includes supplementary mechanisms for cases where the applicable law lacks substantive provisions.
Claudia Mayer, Keine verfahrensrechtliche Anerkennung von beurkundeten oder registrierten familienrechtlichen Rechtsgeschäften innerhalb der EU, [No Procedural Recognition of Acts Affecting Personal Status Based on Certificates Issued by Public Agencies within the EU], pp. 743–765, https://doi.org/10.1628/rabelsZ-2025-0058
In EU law, there is a discernible tendency on the part of the EU legislature to subject legal acts to procedural recognition – including as to their substance – based on certificates of recording or other kinds of documents issued by public agencies. It has therefore already been argued in the literature that a change of method has taken place whereby the conflict-of-laws as well as substantive review in the receiving state has been replaced by a recognition system. But this position must be rejected; generally, such documents issued by public agencies, from a procedural point of view, only have formal probative value. If the validity of the underlying legal act is ultimately uncertain from the point of view of the originating state and if no (procedural) position can be established based on the state’s participation, the substance of the act may and must be re-examined by the receiving state in accordance with the law designated by a conflict of laws examination there, even at the risk of creating a limping legal relationship. The ECJ’s case law on Art. 21 of the TFEU does not alter this principle. To further prevent limping legal relationships at the European level, what is needed instead is better standardization of the conflict of laws in EU secondary law.
BOOK REVIEWS
This issue also contains several reviews of literature in the fields of comparative private and private international law and on related topics (pp. 766–820).
Webinar Data protection and collective actions – 19 December
On 19th December 2025, from 10-12 CET, the European Civil Justice Centre hosts a webinar on Data protection and collective actions from a US, European and cross-border perspective.
The fast-paced development of digital technologies, and the massive, cross-border, global dimension of the processing of personal data in the Internet, have necessitated the collective enforcement of data protection rights.
This seminar delves into developments in European collective actions, mass violations of data subjects’ rights, and the use of collective actions for the protection of supra-individual and homogeneous interests in Europe and the US, and aspects of cross-border litigation.
The focus of the seminar will the research conducted by Marina Federico (Naples University) for her book Protezione dei dati personali e tutela collettiva published in 2024.
Registration for free on Eventbrite here.
Program
10.00 Xandra Kramer (Erasmus University Rotterdam/European Civil Justice Centre) – Opening and welcome
10.05 Stefaan Voet (KU Leuven/ European Civil Justice Centre) – Introduction: Developments in European collective redress
10.25 Marina Federico (University of Naples “Parthenope”) – Data protection and collective actions. Itineraries of legal comparison in Europe and the United States
11.00 Eduardo Silva de Freitas (TMC Asser Institute/Erasmus University Rotterdam) – An Apple a day won’t keep litigation away: private international law’s new path for collective data protection claims
11.15 Discussion, moderated by Stefaan Voet
Job Offer: Research Fellow at Bucerius Law School, Hamburg
Henrike von Scheliha (Bucerius Law School) is currently looking to hire a Research Fellow (with the option to prepare a PhD thesis under her supervision) in German Family and/or Succession Law.
More information is available here.