Views
Support in cross-border transactions by Adults: Contract law vs capacity law
Thalia Kruger, University of Antwerp & Senior Research Associate, University of Johannesburg
This piece is based on a paper that I presented at the World Congress on Adults Protection, held in Amsterdam from 8 to 10 July 2026. It is still work in progress.
The World Conference focused on capacity rather than vulnerability and incapacity of Adults. This choice of theme resulted in much discussion on support for the exercise of capacity. Supported decision-making rather than replaced decision-making for an incapacitated person poses challenges for Private International Law, especially of the Von Savigny tradition. Our approach is to first characterise and then find which laws we can apply. But it is exactly this characterisation that is becoming blurry: to be fully in compliance with the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities people should be allowed to make decisions, i.e. conclude contracts with the help of others. There should be no boxes of capacitated and incapacitated persons. No longer can only the former conclude contracts, while the latter have to be represented by guardians or other persons with a representation function. In Adult law some concepts are phasing out, while others are being reinterpreted by legislators and courts.
Below, after briefly explaining the move towards supported decision-making in substantive family law and human rights law, I turn to the available legal framework for cross-border cases, then to the difficult question of characterisation, and lastly to cross-border recognition.
Recognition of Italian Extrajudicial Divorces in Tunisia — Between Methodological Uncertainty and the Need to Preserve Continuity of Personal Status Across Borders
I. Introduction
Recent years have witnessed a movement towards the dejudicialization of consensual divorce and the proliferation of extrajudicial divorce mechanisms notably in Europe. While this mode of “private divorce” is not, as such, a new phenomenon and extrajudicial divorce has been practised in different forms across various parts of the world (see e.g., Béligh Elbalti, “Le divorce au Japon et son accueil en Tunisie” (2026) 73 Osaka University Law Review 6), it has attracted increasing attention in recent years, given the growing number of European jurisdictions that have introduced mechanisms allowing spouses to dissolve their marriage outside the courts, as well as the complex questions that such divorces raise in terms of their recognition and circulation across borders (for a comparative view in Europe, see e.g., CJEU, Directorate for Research and Documentation, “Extrajudicial Divorce: Rules, Procedures and Cross-Border Recognition in Member States” (Research Note, February 2022) 3; Pablo Quinzá Redondo, “The Recognition of Non-Judicial Divorces in Europe” in Konrad Duden and Denise Wiedemann (eds), Changing Families, Changing Family Law in Europe (Intersentia, 2024) 23). This is particularly true of the Italian form of extrajudicial divorce, introduced by Decree-Law No. 132/2014, converted into Law No. 162/2014, which allows spouses meeting specified conditions to obtain a divorce through an agreement before the civil registrar, rather than through a court.
Private International Law and European Society
from Marlene Tiede, a Research Fellow and PhD Candidate at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law.
Can one speak of a European society without speaking about private relations? Recent scholarship on European society has largely approached the concept through the lens of public law. Yet societies are constituted at least as much by the horizontal relations between individuals and groups as by public institutions. In the absence of a comprehensive European private law, this blogpost turns to EU private international law (PIL), the principal framework for coordinating interactions between the diverse private laws of the Member States and structuring cross-border private life within the Union. I will argue that EU PIL brings into view the importance of coordination frameworks for organising a mode of integration based not on unification, but on interdependence.
News
Lindemann Fellowship for Private International Law: Call for Applications 2026
The Lindemann Fellowship was established in 2024 to support promising academics in Europe in the field of private international law.
Fellows are accepted for a three-year period, with new Fellows joining each year, as existing Fellows complete their tenure.
Book Launch: Commercial Private International Law in Southern Africa
The publication of the open-access Festschrift in honour of Professor Christopher F Forsyth KC, Commercial Private International Law in Southern Africa: Comparative and International Perspectives, has previously been announced on this blog.
Edited by Professor Jan L. Neels and Professor Eesa A. Fredericks, with the assistance of Dr Solomon Okorley, the volume brings together comparative and international perspectives on commercial private international law in Southern Africa.
To celebrate its publication, UJ Press, in collaboration with the editors and the Research Centre for Private International Law in Emerging Countries (RCPILEC), University of Johannesburg, is organising an online book launch, bringing together the editors, the dedicatee himself, and other distinguished guests.
The programme will include addresses by the University of Johannesburg’s leadership, contributions by the editors, and a reply by Professor Christopher F Forsyth and/or Mrs Gillian Charles.
The book launch will take place online. The details are as follows:
Date: 19 October 2026
Time: 13:00–14:00 SAST
Venue: Online
Queries: ujpress@uj.ac.za
OUT now: Multistate Torts in European Private International Law
The new extensive Volume Multistate Torts in European Private International Law was just published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book is the outcome of the second edition of the EAPIL Winter School in Private International Law. The contributions are based on the lectures given during the course, which took place at the Department of Law, Economics and Cultures, University of Insubria, Como, Italy, from 10 to 15 February 2025. It is edited by Silvia Marino (University of Insubria, Como), Anna Wysocka-Bar (Jagiellonian University, Kraków) and Javier Carrascosa González (University of Murcia).
The chapters discuss the current and future challenges related to the resolution of complex cases of cross-border torts and related damages. Globalisation and digitalisation are particularly crucial in these areas, where the lack of a truly common regulatory fragmentation could leave victims in a situation of helplessness. New challenges, such as distance delicts and the rise of modern social sensibilities, risk affecting the traditional goals of private international law, such as predictability and legal certainty, but especially substantive targets, as the protection of the victim and the enhancement of human rights. The Chapters of this book address these newest challenges with particular regard.