by Matthias Weller
on February 29, 2020
By Gaurav Chaliya and Nishtha Ojha. The authors are third year students at the National Law University, Jodhpur, India.
Introduction
In 2018, around 47 entities forming the part of corporate
groups were reported to be in debt which reflects the necessity of having an
effective cross-border legal framework. The flexibility in the framework of
cross border insolvency helps in overcoming the hurdles encountered in cross
border disputes. This framework essentially girdles around the principle of
coordination and cooperation and in consonance with these principles the
National Company Law Appellate Tribunal [“NCLAT”]
in Jet Airways case has extended
these principles by providing sufficient rights to Dutch trustee and observed that– Read more...
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by Stephen Pitel
on February 28, 2020
By Stephen G.A. Pitel, Faculty of Law, Western University
Eritrean mine workers who fled from that country to British Columbia sued the mine’s owner, Nevsun Resources Ltd. They sought damages for various torts including battery, false imprisonment and negligence. They also sought damages for breaches of customary international law. Their core allegation was that as conscripted labourers in Eritrea’s National Service Program, they were forced to work in the mine in intolerable conditions and Nevsun was actively involved in this arrangement.
Nevsun moved to strike out all of the claims on the basis of the act of state doctrine. It also moved to strike out the proceedings based on violations of customary international law because they were bound to fail as a matter of law. Read more...
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by Thalia Kruger
on February 25, 2020
Report written by Tine Van Hof, researcher at the University of Antwerp
On the 13th and 14th of
February 2020, the Academy of European Law (ERA) organized a conference on
‘Recent ECtHR Case Law in Family Matters’. This conference was held in
Strasbourg and brought together forty participants coming from twenty-one
different countries. This report will set
out some of the issues addressed at the conference. Read more...
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by Maria Hook
on February 10, 2020
This note addresses the question whether
there is a common law basis for the recognition of foreign declarations of
parentage. It appears that this issue has not received much attention in common
law jurisdictions, but it was the subject of a relatively recent Privy Council decision
(C v C [2019] UKPC 40).
The issue arises where a foreign
court or judicial authority has previously determined that a person is, or is
not, a child’s parent, and the question of parentage then resurfaces in the
forum (for example, in the context of parentage proceedings or maintenance proceedings).
If there is no basis for recognition of the foreign declaration, the forum
court will have to consider the issue de novo (usually by applying the law of
the forum: see, eg, Status of Children Act 1969 (NZ)). This would increase the
risk of “limping” parent-child relationships (that is, relationships that are
recognised in some countries but not in others) – a risk that is especially
problematic in the context of children born by way of surrogacy or assisted
human reproduction technology. Read more...
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by Thalia Kruger
on February 9, 2020
Can a foreign marriage be recognised in the UK if the State where it was celebrated is not recognised as a State? This was the question which the High Court of Justice (Family Division) had to answer in MM v NA: [2020] EWHC 93 (Fam).
The Court distilled two questions: was the marriage validly celebrated and if so, can it be recognised in the UK? If the answers to both questions were affirmative, the court could give a declaratory order; if one of them were negative, the parties could celebrate a new marriage in the UK. Read more...
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by Matthias Weller
on January 29, 2020
by José Antonio Briceño Laborí, Professor of Private International Law, Universidad Central de Venezuela y Universidad Católica Andrés Bello
In 2019 the Venezuelan Private International Law (hereinafter “PIL”) academic community made clear that, despite all the difficulties, it remains active and has the energy to expand its activities and undertake new challenges.
As an example of this
we have, firstly, the different events in which our professors have
participated and the diversity of topics developed by them, among which the
following stand out: Read more...
- XI
Latin American Arbitration Conference, Asunción, Paraguay, May 2019 (Luis
Ernesto Rodríguez – How is tecnology impacting on arbitration?)
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by Asma Alouane
on January 29, 2020
As reported previously, the ECtHR was asked by the French Cour de cassation for an advisory opinion on the legal parentage of children born through surrogacy arrangement. In its answer, the Court considered that the right to respect for private life (article 8 of ECHR) requires States parties to provide a possibility of recognition of the child’s legal relationship with the intended mother. However, according to the Court, a State is not required, in order to achieve such recognition, to register the child’s birth certificate in its civil status registers. It also declared that adoption can serve as a means of recognizing the parent-child relationship. Read more...
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by Matthias Weller
on January 23, 2020
By Dr Lukas Schmidt (PhD EBS Law School), law clerk (Rechtsreferendar) at the Regional Court of Wiesbaden, Germany
In
cross-border insolvencies questions of international jurisdiction might arise either
in relation to the opening of an insolvency proceeding as such, or – further
down the road – in relation to proceedings deriving from already opened insolvency
proceedings. In both cases the European Insolvency Regulation Recast
(Regulation 2015/848) provides for answers: According to Article 3 of the
Regulation the courts of the Member State within the territory of which the
centre of a debtor’s main interests is situated shall have jurisdiction to open
insolvency proceedings. Article 6 of the Regulation provides that the courts in
such Member States shall have jurisdiction as well for actions deriving
directly from insolvency proceedings and closely linked with them. Both kind of
decisions are to be automatically recognized in all other member states, either
through Art. 19 (judgments opening insolvency proceedings) or through Art. 32
(other judgments). Read more...
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by Matthias Weller
on January 18, 2020
by Matthias Lehmann
Smart contracts and the conflict of laws is a widely discussed topic today (see for instance the post by Giesela Rühl). A new contribution to this debate comes from ISDA, the International Swaps and Derivatives, in collaboration with the Singapore Academy of Law and leading law firms. Also involved is the provider of an existing smart contract platform (Corda), which guarantees the paper’s practical relevance. The analysis focuses on a potential smart derivative contract to be implemented on Corda. Read more...
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by Giesela Ruehl
on January 14, 2020
Written by Prof. Dr. Stefan Arnold, Thorben Eick and Cedric Hornung, University of Münster
Digitization, Artificial Intelligence and the blockchain technology are core elements of a historic transformation of modern society. Such transformations necessarily challenge traditional legal concepts. Hitherto, the academic discourse is much more intense in the area of substantial private law than it is in the area of Private International Law. Thus, a conference on the specific challenges of Artificial Intelligence and Digitization for Private International Law was long overdue. Stefan Arnold and Gerald Mäsch of the Institute of International Business Law (WWU Münster) organized a conference with that specific focus on November 8th at Münster University. The title of the conference was »Conflict of laws 4.0: Artificial Intelligence, smart contracts and bitcoins as challenges for Private International Law«. Around a hundred legal scholars, practitioners, doctoral candidates and students attended the conference. Read more...
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