A joint conference of the Max Planck Institute for Procedural Law (Luxembourg) and the British Institute for International and Comparative Law will be held on May 26th in London, within the framework of a series of BIICL events on the Brexit.

This particular seminar will look at the potential impact of a Brexit on cross-border commercial dispute resolution and on the role of London as a center for international litigation and arbitration. Speakers will address selected questions such as the legal framework for the transitional period; the validity of choice of court agreements and future frequency of choice of court agreements in favour of English courts; the different approaches in England and under the Brussels I Recast as to parallel proceedings; the cross-border circulation of titles; the Swiss position as to commercial dispute resolution between Member States and third States. A roundtable discussion will place a particular focus on London’s future as a centre for commercial dispute resolution post Brexit.

Speakers:

• Burkhard Hess, Max Planck Institute Luxembourg
• Richard Fentiman, University of Cambridge
• Andrew Dickinson, University of Oxford
• Marta Requejo Isidro, Max Planck Institute Luxembourg/University of Santiago de Compostela
• Trevor Hartley, London School of Economics
• Alexander Layton QC, 20 Essex Street
• Tanja Domej, University of Zurich
• Thomas Pfeiffer, University of Heidelberg
• Paul Oberhammer, University of Vienna
• Adam Johnson, Herbert Smith Freehills
• Martin Howe QC, 8 New Square
• Karen Birch, Allen and Overy
• Diana Wallis, President of the European Law Institute and former Vice-President of the European Parliament
• Deba Das, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer LLP

Time: 15:30-19:00 (followed by a drinks reception)

Venue: British Institute of International and Comparative Law, Charles Clore House, 17 Russell Square, London WC1B 5JP

The program is available here; for registration click here.

The British Institute of International and Comparative Law, the Open University and the Centre for Small States at Queen Mary University of London are organising a conference on “Integration and Dispute Resolution in Small States”, hosted by Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP on May 19 and 20, 2016. The aim of this 1½ day conference is to bring together academics, representatives of Small States, as well as lawyers litigating in or for Small States (defined as those States with a population of 1.5m or less), to discuss the particular issues these jurisdictions face in regard to international dispute resolution and regional integration. The conference focusses in particular on the commercial relations between large economies and Small States, the role of Small States as financial centres, as well as B2B, Investor-State and State-to-State dispute resolution involving Small States.

View the full programme and register here.

Speakers and Chairs

Gary Born WilmerHale (Keynote speaker); Justice Winston Anderson Caribbean Court of Justice; Agnieszka Ason Technische Universität Berlin; Elizabeth Bakibinga Commonwealth Secretariat; Professor George Barker Australia National University; Dr David S Berry University of the West Indies; James Bridgeman FCIArb; N Jansen Calamita BIICL; Barbara Dohmann QC Blackstone Chambers; Conway Blake Debevoise & Plimpton LLP; Professor Sue Farran University of Northumbria; Stephen Fietta Partner at Fietta; Steven Finizio WilmerHale; Jack Graves Touro College of Law; Françoise L M Hendy Barbados High Commission; Desley Horton WilmerHale; Her Excellency Dr Len Ishmael Ambassador, Embassies of the Eastern Caribbean States; Michel Kallipetis QC Independent Mediators Limited and Quadrant Chambers; Edwini Kessie Office of the Chief Trade Advisor; Alex Layton QC 20 Essex Street; Dr Eva Lein BIICL; Brian McGarry Centre for Diplomacy & International Security, London Centre of International Law Practice; Professor Baldur Þórhallsson University of Iceland, Small States Studies; Lauge Poulsen University College London; Jan Yves Remy Sidley Austin; Dominic Roughton Herbert Smith Freehills LLP; Professor Francesco Schurr University of Liechtenstein; Geoff Sharp Clifton Chambers; Mele Tupou Ministry of Justice; UNCITRAL; Professor Robert G Volterra; Professor Gordon Walker Hamad Bin Khalifa University; Tony Willis Brick Court Chambers

The event is convened by:

Dr Petra Butler, Centre for Small States, Queen Mary University of London; Dr Eva Lein, British Institute of International and Comparative Law; Rhonson Salim, Open University.

Maria Chiara Marullo and Francisco Javier Zamora Cabot have published a paper on “TRANSNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS LITIGATIONS. KIOBEL’S TOUCH AND CONCERN: A TEST UNDER CONSTRUCTION.”

The abstract reads:

In recent years the international debate on Transnational Human Rights Litigation has mainly focused, although not exclusively, on the role of the Alien Tort Claims Act as a way of redress for serious Human Rights violations. This Act has given the possibility of granting a restorative response to victims, in a Country, such as the United States of America, that assumes the defense of an interest of the International Community as a whole: to guarantee the access to justice to the aforesaid victims. The purpose of this article is to analyze the recent and restrictive position on this Act of the Supreme Court of the United States, in the Kiobel case, and especially when, as a means of modulating the limitative doctrine affirmed there, the Touch and Concern test was introduced. It has generated from its very inception a strong discussion amongst international legal scholars and also great repercussions concerning the practice of the U.S. District and Circuit Courts.

The publication can be downloaded here or through SSRN. 

The Permanent Bureau of the Hague Conference on Private International Law and the University of Lucerne are organising a conference “Towards a Global Framework for International Commercial Transactions: Implementing the Hague Principles on Choice of Law in International Commercial Contracts” in Lucerne on 8-9 September 2016.

The purpose of this conference is to present the impact and prospects of the Hague Principles of 2015 in the context of other instruments applicable to international commercial transactions.

For the programme and registration information see the conference’s website.

by Veerle Van den Eeckhout

On the blog section of the Dutch journal Nederlands Juristenblad, a blog of Veerle Van Den Eeckhout on the Proposal for a revision of the Posting Directive has been published, see here.

The blog is entitled “Modellering van internationaal privaatrecht – Een enkele ipr-technische aantekening bij het voorstel tot wijziging van de Detacheringsrichtlijn” (in English: “Modelling Private International Law. A single PIL-technical note on the proposed revision of the Posting Directive”). It is written in Dutch.

The blog focuses on a single technical PIL-aspect of the proposed revision of the Posting Directive; at the end, however, the issue is placed in a broader context of ongoing dynamics and debates in private international law – see also already on this the blog “The impact and potential of a curious and unique discipline. About PIL, Shell Nigeria, European and global competition and social justice”, published also on the blog section of the NJB-site, see here , available in English on  https://conflictoflaws.de/2015/on-pil-international-labour-law-and-corporate-social-responsibility/.

The following information have kindly been provided by Prof. Dr. Matthias Lehmann, University of Bonn.

Bank resolution is key to avoiding a repetition of the global financial crisis in which failing financial institutions had to be bailed out with taxpayers’ money. It permits recapitalizing banks or alternatively winding them down in an orderly fashion without creating systemic risk. Resolution measures, however, suffer from a structural weakness. They are taken by nation-states with territorially limited powers, yet they target entities or groups with global activities and assets in many countries. Under traditional rules of private international law, these activities and assets are governed by the law of other states which is beyond the remit of the state undertaking the resolution.

Matthias Lehmann (University of Bonn) addresses this problem in a recent paper titled “Bail-in and Private International Law: How to Make Bank Resolution Measures Effective Across Borders”. He illustrates the conflict between resolution and private international law by using the example of the European Union, where the limitations of cross-border issues are most acutely felt. He explains the techniques and mechanisms provided in the Bank Recovery and Resolution Directive (BRRD) and the Single Resolution Mechanism (SRM) Regulation to make resolution measures effective in intra-Eurozone cases, in intra-EU conflicts with non-Euro Member States and in relation to conflicts with third countries. Besides this, he also throws light on the divergences and flaws in the BRRD’s transposition into national law. In this context, he discusses two recent cases, Goldman Sachs International v Novo Banco SA [2015] EWHC 2371 (Comm), and BayernLB v Hypo Alpe Adria (HETA case) Regional Court, Munich I, judgment of 8 May 2015, that have dealt with the recognition of foreign resolution acts. A brief overview of third-country regimes furthermore highlights the problems in obtaining recognition of EU resolution measures abroad.

The following announcement has been kindly provided by Professor Dr. Stephan Lorenz, LMU Munich.

It was in 1916 that Ernst Rabel founded the ‘Institute of Comparative Law’ at Munich University – the first of its kind in Germany. The 100th Anniversary of the Institute, which still persists as a department of the Institute of International Law at Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich, gives reason to review the influence of Ernst Rabel on both, sales law and conflict of laws and to take a current view on recent developments in these fields. As is well-known, Rabel’s work on sales law was highly influential for the development of the Hague Uniform Sales Law of 1964, the precursor of the CISG of 1980. The latter had a formative impact on EU consumer sales law and subsequently on the proposal for a Common European Sales Law (CESL). But also the current contractual conflict of laws of the EU as the Rome I-Regulation would not exist in its current form without the fundamental contributions of Ernst Rabel. The presentations of the conference cover the entire range of these topics from the beginnings of comparative law and its early years until its most recent developments:

• Dean’s Greeting, Prof. Dr. Martin Franzen
• Introductory Speech, Prof. Dr. Peter Kindler
• The History of the Institute of Comparative Law, Prof. Dr. Dagmar Coester-Waltjen, München/Göttingen
• Welcome and Introduction, Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. mult. Hans Jürgen Sonnenberger, München
• Ernst Rabel – The Munich Years, Archivdirektor a.D. Hans-Joachim Hecker, Stadtarchiv München
• Karl Neumeyer as a Pioneer of Comparative Law in the field of Public Law, Prof. Dr. Peter Huber, Judge at the Federal Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht), München
• Rabel’s Influence on the CISG and the Development of European Sales Law, Prof. Dr. Ulrich Magnus, Hamburg
• The Distinction between Digital and Analogous Goods – How fit for the Future are the Commission’s Proposals for a Law of Contracts in the Digital Interior Market?, Univ.-Prof. Dr. Christiane Wendehorst, LL.M. (Cambridge), Wien
• International Contract Law and CISG, Prof. Dr. Andreas Spickhoff, München
• Transaction-like Party Autonomy, Prof. Dr. Marc-Philippe Weller, Heidelberg
• Conclusions, Prof. Dr. Stephan Lorenz, München

Participation in the Conference requires prior registration here.

The American Branch of the International Law Association has issued a call for papers.  See here for more details.

From the Private International Law Interest Group of the American Society of International Law:

We are pleased to present the second issue of “Commentaries on Private International Law,” the newsletter of the American Society of International Law Private International Law Interest Group.

You may find it here and here.

Professor Anthony Colangelo of the SMU Dedman School of Law has just posted a new article entitled A Systems Theory of Fragmentation and Harmonization.  It blends public and private international law and has a strong dose of conflict of laws.  It is well worth the read!

Also, as a friendly reminder, there is a wonderful SSRN eJournal on Transnational Litigation/Arbitration, Private International Law, and Conflict of Laws that is available here.