Bringing together a team of researchers from Europe and Brazil (Universidade de São Paulo), the Center of Family Law of the University Jean Moulin Lyon 3, organizes an international seminar entitled:

The circulation of people and their family status in a globalized world: the foreigner’s family

The Seminar will take place in Lyon, wednesday, November 23, 2016, with the following program:

Morning: 9h – 12h30
Introduction:
What is a “foreigner”? Between regionalization and globalization, J.-S. Bergé and P. Casella (9h – 9h30)

I – The dimensions of the foreigner’s family
Presidency: P. Casella

– In the European area, Fulchiron H., A. Slimani, L. Sorisole (9h30 – 10h)
– In the South American area, G. Cerqueira (10h- 10h30)
– Debate: A. Bonomi (subject) (10h30 to 10h45)

Coffee Break: 10h45 – 11h

II – The integration of the foreigner’s family (social rights, integration policies)
Chair: F. Menezes

– In the European area, B. Baret, L. Eck (11h – 11h30)
– In the South American area, F. Menezes, D. Cordeiro (11h30 – 12h)
– Debate: Discussion A. Bonomi (subject) (12h – 12h30)

Lunch: 12h30 to 2h15

III – The protection of the foreigner’s family (entry, residence permit, displacement)
Chair: C. Moises

– Protection of fundamental rights, L. Robert, C. Moises (14h15 – 14h45)
– Protection by special statutes (political areas, economic areas), E. Durand, G. Monaco (14h45 – 15h15)

Coffee Break: 15h15 – 15h30

– Debate:  A. Bonomi (subject) (15h30 –  16h30)
– Closing, G. Monaco, H. Fulchiron (16h30 – 17h)

Seminar Directors: Hugues Fulchiron and Gustavo Monaco

Language: French

Venue: 15, quai Claude Bernard, Lyon, France – Université Jean Moulin Lyon 3 (Salle Caillemer)

No participation fee.

By James J Fawcett FBA (Professor of Law Emeritus, University of Nottingham), Máire Ní Shúilleabháin (Assistant Professor in Law, University College Dublin) and Sangeeta Shah (Associate Professor of Law, University of Nottingham)
Human Rights and Private International Law is the first title to consider and analyse the numerous English private international law cases discussing human rights concerns arising in the commercial and family law contexts. The right to a fair trial is central to the intersection between human rights and private international law, and is considered in depth along with the right to freedom of expression; the right to respect for private and family life; the right to marry; the right to property; and the prohibition of discrimination on the ground of religion, sex, or nationality.

Focusing on, though not confined to, the human rights set out in the ECHR, the work also examines the rights laid down under the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights and other international human rights instruments.

Written by specialists in both human rights and private international law, this work examines the impact, both actual and potential, of human rights concerns on private international law, as well as the oft overlooked topic of the impact of private international law on human rights.

Contents

1: Introduction
2: Human rights, private international law, and their interaction
3: The right to a fair trial
4: The right to a fair trial and jurisdiction under the EU rules
5: The right to a fair trial and recognition and enforcement of foreign judgments under the EU rules
6: The right to a fair trial and jurisdiction under national rules
7: The right to a fair trial and recognition and enforcement of foreign judgments under the traditional English rules
8: The right to a fair trial and private international law: concluding remarks
9: The prohibition of discrimination and private international law
10: Freedom of expression and the right to respect for private life: international defamation and invasion of privacy
11: The right to marry, the right to respect for family life, the prohibition on discrimination and international marriage
12: Religious rights and recognition of marriage and extra-judicial divorce
13: Right to respect for family life and the rights of the child: international child abduction
14: Right to respect for private and family life and related rights: parental status
15: The right to property, foreign judgments, and cross-border property disputes
16: Overall conclusions

For further information, see here.

Building on the very successful conferences held in Aberdeen (2005), Birmingham (2007), New York (2009), Milan (2011) Madrid (2013), and Cambridge (2015), we are pleased to announce that the Journal of Private International Law will be holding its next Conference at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, 3-5 August 2017. We are now calling for abstracts for the Conference. Please submit an abstract if you would like to make a presentation at the Conference and you are willing to produce a final paper that you will submit for publication in the Journal. Abstracts should be up to 500 words in length and should clearly state the name(s) and affiliation(s) of the author(s).

They can be on any subject matter that falls within the scope of the Journal, and can be offered by people at any stage of their career, including postgraduate students.    The  Journal of Private International Law ( J. Priv. Int. L.) was launched in spring 2005 and covers all aspects of private international law, reflecting the role of the European Union and the Hague Conference on Private International Law in the making of private international law, in addition to the traditional role of domestic legal orders. Articles from scholars anywhere in the world writing in English about developments in any jurisdiction on any aspect of private international law are welcomed, as well as shorter articles or analysis from anywhere in the world, including analysis of new treaties and conventions, and lengthy review articles dealing with significant new publications.

Presentation at the Conference will depend on whether your abstract is selected by the Editors of the Journal (Professors Jonathan Harris of King’s College, London and Paul Beaumont of the University of Aberdeen) and by the conference organisers in the Pontifical Catholic University (Professors Nadia de Araujo, Daniela Vargas and Lauro Gama).  The subsequent article should be submitted to the Journal. Publication in the Journal will be subject to the usual system of refereeing by two experts in the field.

The Conference will be a mixture of plenary (Friday) and parallel panel sessions (Thursday afternoon and Saturday morning).  Please indicate on the abstract whether you are willing to present in either or are only willing to do so in one or the other. A willingness to be flexible maximises our ability to select your paper.

The Conference will be held at the main campus of the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, located in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (www.puc-rio.br). . Further information will be available soon.

Speakers will not be expected to pay a conference fee but will be expected to pay their travel and accommodation expenses to attend the Conference in Rio de Janeiro.  Information on Conference accommodation will be available soon, with a list of hotels and hostels nearby the campus, but the University does not have living arrangements  Details about accommodation and the Conference dinner on the Thursday evening will follow.

Please send your abstract to the following email address by November 15^th 2016: (jprivintlrioconference2017@gmail.com

The Editors of the Cambridge International Law Journal (CILJ) and the Conference Convenors welcome submissions for the Cambridge International and European Law Conference 2017, which will be held in the Faculty of Law, Cambridge on 23 and 24 March 2017. 

Theme 

The theme of the Conference is ‘Transforming Institutions’. This theme is intended to stimulate the exploration of interactions between law and institutions in transformative contexts. Broadly conceived, transformation may refer to: (1) the manner in which the functions of institutions may change over time; (2) how institutions may act as agents of transformation; and (3) how institutions themselves can be subjected to transformation. 

Given the Conference’s focus on European and International law, the organisers invite submissions to consider how structures and norms under European and International Legal systems relate to, influence and are affected by ‘transforming institutions’.

Abstracts

Abstracts of no more than 300 words should be submitted no later than Friday, 25 November 2016.

The authors of selected papers will be required to submit a 2000 word extended abstract to conference@cilj.co.uk by Friday 24 February 2017.

Authors who present at the Conference will also be invited to submit their papers for publication in Volume 6(2) of the CILJ, to be published in the summer of 2017. Authors will be contacted about this after the Conference.

The Conference is aimed at both academic and professional attendees and will be CRD accredited.

Further Information

For further information please contact conference@cilj.co.uk

Halsbury’s Laws of Canada (first edition) has published a reissue (September 2016) of its volume on Conflict of Laws.  It is written by Professor Janet Walker, the author of the leading Canadian textbook in the field.  The reissue is highly detailed with over 260 pages of tables (cases, conventions, legislation), an index and a glossary.  The substantive content runs to over 600 pages including lengthy footnotes.  The reissue can be purchased as a stand-alone reference (without buying the entire Halsbury’s collection) for conflict of laws in Canada (publisher information available here).

I have been very kindly invited to be the speaker of the Forum Conveniens Annual Lecture at the University of Edinburgh this year. It is with great pleasure that I announce it will take place on Wednesday 23rd November 2016, under the title “Farewell, UK. Stocktaking Time for a Continental Europe’s Area of Civil Justice”. Start is foreseen at 6.00pm, at the following venue: LG.10, David Hume Tower, EH8 9JX.

Attendance is free, however registration is required. For more information  please contact:
Professor Gerry Maher (Gerard.Maher@ed.ac.uk or Dr
Veronica Ruiz Abou Nigm (V.Ruiz.Abou-Nigm@ed.ac.uk)

Forum Conveniens is a forum based at Edinburgh Law School and dedicated to International Private Law (Private International Law). Its base in Edinburgh reflects the distinctive role of Scots law in the development of the subject but at the same time the focus of the Forum is international.

It provides a means of bringing together interested parties (including academic lawyers, practitioners, the judiciary, law reformers, and policy makers) for discussion and exchange of ideas in private international law.

Professor Massimo Benedettelli (University of Bari “Aldo Moro”) has just published a highly noteworthy article entitled “Five Lay Commandments for the EU Private International Law of Companies” in the 17th Volume of the Yearbook of Private International Law (2015/2016).

The author has kindly provided us with the following abstract:

‘While praising European company law as a “cornerstone of the internal market”, the EU institutions have devoted limited attention to issues of competent jurisdiction, applicable law and recognition of judgments which necessarily arise when companies carry out their business on a cross-border basis. This is a paradox, especially if one considers that in this area the EU often follows a policy of “minimal harmonization” of the laws of the Member States and that this policy leads to the co-existence of a variety of different rules and institutions directly or indirectly impinging on the regulation of companies, thus to possible conflicts of jurisdictions and/or laws. The European Court of Justice’s “Centros doctrine” fills this gap only partially: this is due not only to the inherent limits of its case-law origin, but also to various hidden assumptions and corollaries on which it appears to be grounded and which still need to be unearthed. Hence, time has come for a better coordination of the legal systems of the Member States in the field of company law, possibly through the enactment of an ad hoc instrument. To be properly carried out, however, such coordination requires a preliminary clarification of what the EU private international law of companies really is and how it should be handled at the current stage of the European integration. This article tries to contribute to such clarification by proposing five main guidelines, in the form of “commandments” for the European legislator, courts and practitioners. It is submitted that, first, one should understand the different scope of the three legal disciplines (EU law, private international law and company law) which interact in this field so as to assess when and to what extent the lack of coordination of the Member States’ domestic laws may affect the achievement of the objectives pursued by the EU. As a second analytical step, the impact that the EU constitutional principles of subsidiarity and proportionality may have on the scope of the relevant regulatory powers of the EU and of the Member States should be determined. Third, the issue of “characterization” should be addressed so that the boundaries of company law vis-à-vis neighbouring disciplines (capital markets law, insolvency law, contract law, tort law) are fixed throughout the entire EU legal space in a uniform and consistent way. Fourth, the Member States’ legal systems should be coordinated on the basis of the “jurisdictional approach” method (which de facto inspires the ECJ in Centros and its progenies) by granting a role of prominence to the Member State under the laws of which a company has been incorporated. Fifth, any residual conflict which may still arise among different Member States in the regulation of a given company should be resolved, in principle, by respecting the will of the parties to the corporate contract and the rights “to incorporate” and “to re-incorporate” which they enjoy under EU law. In the author’s opinion, an EU private international law of companies developed on the basis of these guidelines not only would achieve a fair balance between the needs of the integration and the Member States’ sovereignty, but would also create a framework for a European “market of company law” where a “virtuous” forum and law shopping could be performed in a predictable and regulated way.’

In Endean v British Columbia, 2016 SCC 42 (available here) the Supreme Court of Canada has held that “In pan-national class action proceedings over which the superior court has subject-matter and personal jurisdiction, a judge of that court has the discretion to hold a hearing outside his or her territory in conjunction with other judges managing related class actions, provided that the judge will not have to resort to the court’s coercive powers in order to convene or conduct the hearing and the hearing is not contrary to the law of the place in which it will be held” (quotation from the court’s summary/headnote).

The qualifications on the holding are important, since some of the earlier lower court decisions had been more expansive in asserting the inherent power of the superior court to sit outside the province (for example beyond the class proceedings context).  I am concerned about any extraterritorial hearings that are not expressly authorized by specific statutory provisions, but I do appreciate the utility (from an efficiency perspective) of the court’s conclusion in the particular context of this dispute.  It remains to be seen if attempts will be made to broaden this holding to other contexts.

The court has also held that “A video link between the out-of-province courtroom where the hearing takes place and a courtroom in the judge’s home province is not a condition for a judge to be able to sit outside his or her home province. Neither the [class proceeding statutes] nor the inherent jurisdiction of the court imposes such a requirement. The open court principle is not violated when a superior court judge exercises his or her discretion to sit outside his or her home province without a video link to the home jurisdiction” (quotation from the court’s summary/headnote).

This aspect of the decision concerns me, since my view is that the open court principle requires that members of the Ontario public and the media can see the proceedings of an Ontario court in an Ontario courtroom.  It is a hollow claim that they can fly to another province to watch them there.  The separate concurring decision appreciates this aspect of the case more than the majority decision, though it too stops short of requiring a video link.  In its view, “While the court should not presumptively order that a video link back to the home provinces be set up where the court sits extraprovincially, members of the public, the media, or counsel can request that a video link or other means be used to enhance the accessibility of the hearing. If such a request is made, or the judge considers it appropriate, a video link or other means to enhance accessibility should be ordered, subject to any countervailing considerations” (quotation from the court’s summary/headnote).

The European Association for Data Science (EuADS) will hold the first European Data Science Conference in Luxembourg on 7-8 November 2016. This interdisciplinary event is the inaugural conference of EuADS and aims to provide a setting for fostering communication among all stakeholders of Data Science in Europe. You may download the flyer of the conference here. Conference topics include, among others, the question of trust, transparency and provenance of data including where data come from and by which mechanisms trust in data might be achieved, as well as legal aspects of data science such as data protection, data privacy and data access. The conference will feature a symposium on “Legal dimensions of Data Science” with contributions by Burkhard Hess (MPI Luxembourg), Advocate General Pedro Cruz Villalón, Gerald Spindler (University of Göttingen), Mark D. Cole (University of Luxembourg) and Jan von Hein (University of Freiburg). The full programme is available here.

The EBS Law School in cooperation with Clifford Chance will host the EBS Law School Arbitration Day on 18 November 2016 organized by Professor Dr. Matthias Weller and Dr. Alexandra Diehl.

The event will focus on the quest for improved systems of arbitration. Topics will be:

• Dispute Resolution in Asia: Dominated by the Singaporean Merlion?
• The Iran-United States Claims Tribunal: a role model for international arbitration?
• TTIP and CETA: On a Road to Nowhere or to Success?

The speakers are:

• Claudia Annacker, Cleary Gottlieb, Paris
• Simon Greenberg, Clifford Chance, Paris
• Elan Krishna, Clifford Chance, Singapore
• Dr. Cristina Hoss, Legal Adviser to Judge Bruno Simma, Iran-US Claims Tribunal, Den Haag
• Prof. Dr. R. Alexander Lorz, Secretary for Public Education, German State of Hesse, Wiesbaden
• Representative from US Consulate General Frankfurt
• Prof. Dr. André Schmidt, EBS Business School/University Witten-Herdecke
• Prof. Dr. Mathias Wolkewitz, General Counsel Legal, Taxes, Insurances, Wintershall AG

The lectures as well as the panel discussions will be in English. The event will start at 1.30 p.m. in Lecture Room “Sydney” at EBS Law School in Wiesbaden.

For further information and registration see here.