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Foreign Judgments: The Limits of Transnational Issue Estoppel, Reciprocity, and Transnational Comity
Written by Professor Yeo Tiong Min, SC (honoris causa), Yong Pung How Chair Professor of Law, Yong Pung How School of Law, Singapore Management University
In Merck Sharp & Dohme Corp v Merck KGaA [2021] SGCA 14, a full bench of the Singapore Court of Appeal addressed the limits of transnational issue estoppel in Singapore law, and flagged possible fundamental changes to the common law on the recognition and enforcement of foreign judgments in Singapore. The litigation involves multiple parties spread over different jurisdictions. The specific facts involved in the appeal are fairly straightforward, centring on what has been decided in a judgment from the English court, and whether it could be used to raise issue estoppel on the interpretation of a particular term of the contract between the parties. The Court of Appeal affirmed the decision of the High Court that it could. What makes the case interesting are the wide-ranging observations on the operation of issue estoppel from foreign judgments, and more fundamentally on the basis of the recognition and enforcement of foreign judgments in the common law of Singapore.
The Court of Appeal affirmed the case law in Singapore that so far have ruled that a foreign judgment is capable of raising issue estoppel in Singapore proceedings. It upheld the uncontroversial requirements that the judgment must first be recognised under the private international law of Singapore, and that there must be identity of issues and parties. It is the first Singapore case, however, to discuss and affirm the need for the foreign judgment to be final and conclusive (under the law of the originating state) not just on the merits, but also on the issue forming the basis of the issue estoppel. The Court also highlighted the caution that needs to be exercised when determining what has actually been conclusively decided under a foreign legal system, especially where the foreign courts operate under different procedural rules.
The Court discussed the outer limits of transnational issue estoppel without reaching a conclusion because they were not in issue on the facts of the case. It accepted that issue estoppel raises a question of lex fori procedure, and that as a starting point, the same principles of issue estoppel apply whether the previous judgment is a local or foreign one. It made a number of important observations on the limitations of transnational issue estoppel. First, it affirmed that issue estoppel from a foreign judgment would not be applicable if: (a) there is a mandatory law of the forum that applies irrespective of the foreign elements of the case and irrespective of any applicable choice of law rules; (b) the issue in question engages the public policy of the forum; or (c) where the issue that is the subject of the estoppel is procedural for the purpose of the conflict of laws. Second, it noted that that transnational issue estoppel should be applied with due consideration of whether the foreign decision is territorially limited in its application. Third, the Court highlighted the possibility that it may not apply issue estoppel to a defendant in circumstances where the defendant did not, and was not reasonably expected to, argue the point, or argue the point fully, in answer to the claim brought against it in the foreign jurisdiction.
Fourth, issue estoppel effect may be denied to a foreign judgment if it conflicts with the public policy of the forum. This last point is generally uncontroversial. However, what is notable in the judgment is that the Court left open the question whether an error made by the foreign court regarding the content or application of Singapore law would provide a defence based on public policy, or as a standalone limitation. As a standalone limitation, it would be inconsistent with the conclusiveness principle in Godard v Gray (1870) LR 6 QB 139, as well as the Hague Convention on Choice of Court Agreements. Thus, it may be that foreign judgments could be reviewed on the merits at least in respect of some types of errors of Singapore law, at least under the common law. Further clarification will be needed on this issue from the Court of Appeal in the future.
Fifth, the Court discussed the exception to issue estoppel. A distinctive feature of Singapore law on issue estoppel is the rejection of the broadly worded “special circumstances” exception to issue in English common law (Arnold v National Westminster Bank plc [1991] 2 AC 93). Singapore law (The Royal Bank of Scotland NV v TT International Ltd [2015] 5 SLR 1104) has instead a narrow exception based on the satisfaction following cumulative requirements:
(a) the decision said to give rise to issue estoppel must directly affect the future determination of the rights of the litigants;
(b) the decision must be shown to be clearly wrong;
(c) the error in the decision must be shown to have stemmed from the fact that some point of fact or law relevant to the decision was not taken or argued before the court which made that decision and could not reasonably have been taken or argued on that occasion;
(d) there can be no attempt to claw back rights that have accrued pursuant to the erroneous decision or to otherwise undo the effects of that decision; and
(e) it must be shown that great injustice would result if the litigant in question were estopped from putting forward the particular point which is said to be the subject of issue estoppel – in this regard, if the litigant failed to take advantage of an avenue of appeal that was available to him, it will usually not be possible for him to show that the requisite injustice nevertheless exists.
The Court noted the difficulty in applying requirement (b) to a foreign judgment because the principle of conclusiveness (Godard v Gray (1870) LR 6 QB 139) prohibits re-opening the merits of the foreign decision (note that this is potentially challenged above but only in respect of Singapore law matters). It considered four possible approaches to this issue: (1) leave things as they are, with the consequence that foreign judgments may have stronger issue estoppel effect than local judgments; (2) do not apply the conclusiveness principle to issue estoppel; (3) apply the broader “special circumstances” exception to foreign judgments rather than the narrow approach in domestic law; or (4) apply the law of the originating state to the issue whether an exception can be made to issue estoppel. The Court was troubled by all four suggested solutions, and it left the question, to be considered further in a future case which raises the issue squarely.
The Court also endorsed the principle that issue estoppel from a foreign judgment will be defeated by an inconsistent prior foreign judgment or by an inconsistent prior or subsequent local judgment. However, it left open the question whether a foreign judgment obtained after the commencement of local proceedings can be used to raise issue estoppel in the local proceedings. In response to a submission that the foreign judgment should nevertheless be recognised unless there was an abuse of process in the way it was obtained, the Court thought that it was equally plausible to take the view that the commencement of local proceedings could be a defence unless the commencement of local proceedings amounted to an abuse of process.
The most interesting aspects of the decision, with possible far-reaching implications, are two-fold. First, the Court of Appeal cast serious doubt on the obligation theory of the common law and preferred to rest the basis of the recognition and enforcement of foreign judgments on “considerations of transnational comity and reciprocal respect among courts of independent jurisdictions”. Second, it left open the question whether reciprocity should be a precondition to the recognition of foreign judgments at common law. A precondition of reciprocity was said to be entirely consistent with the rationale of transnational comity, and with the position under the statutory registration regimes as well as the Hague Convention on Choice of Court Agreements. These two aspects of the decision are discussed in the public lecture, “The Changing Global Landscape for Foreign Judgments”, Yong Pung How Professorship of Law Lecture, Yong Pung How School of Law, Singapore Management University, 6 May 2021 (available here).
Shell litigation in the Dutch courts – milestones for private international law and the fight against climate change
by Xandra Kramer (Erasmus University Rotterdam/Utrecht Univeristy) and Ekaterina Pannebakker (Leiden University), editors
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Introduction
As was briefly announced earlier on this blog, on 29 January 2021, the Dutch Court of Appeal in The Hague gave a ruling in a long-standing litigation launched by four Nigerian farmers and the Dutch Milieudefensie. The Hague Court held Shell Nigeria liable for pollution caused by oil spills that took place in 2004-2007; the UK-Dutch parent company is ordered to install equipment to prevent damage in the future. Though decided almost four months ago, the case merits discussion of several private international law aspects that will perhaps become one of the milestones in the broader context of liability of parent companies for the actions of their foreign-based subsidiaries.
Climate change and related human rights litigation is undoubtedly of increasing importance in private international law. This is also on the radar of the European institutions as evidenced among others by the ongoing review of the Rome II Regulation (point 6). Today, 26 May 2021, another milestone was reached, both for for private international law but for the fight against global climate change, with the historical judgment (English version, Dutch version) by the Hague District Court ordering Shell to reduce Co2 emissions (point 7). This latter case is discussed more at length in today’s blogpost by Matthias Weller.
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Oil spill in Nigeria and litigation in The Hague courts
As is well-known Shell and other multinationals have been extracting oil in Nigeria since a number of decades. Leaking oil pipes have been causing environmental damage in the Niger Delta, and consequently causing health damage and social-economic damage to the local population and farmers. Litigation has been ongoing in the Netherlands and the United Kingdom for years (see Geert van Calster blog for comments on a recent ruling by the English Supreme Court). At stake in the present case are several oil spills that occurred between 2004-2007 at the underground pipelines and an oil well near the villages Oruma, Goi and Ikot Ada Udo. The spilled oil pollutes agricultural land and water used by the farmers for a living.
Shortly after the oil spills, four Nigerian farmers instituted proceedings in the Netherlands, at the District Court of The Hague. The farmers are supported by the Dutch foundation Milieudefensie, which is also a claimant in the procedure. The claimants submit that the land and water, which the Nigerian farmers explored for living, became infertile. They claim compensation for the damage caused by the Shell’s wrongful acts and negligence while extracting oil and maintaining the pipelines and the well. Furthermore, they claim to order Shell to secure better cleaning of the polluted land and to take appropriate measures to prevent oil leaks in the future.
The farmers summon both the Shell’s Nigerian subsidiary and the parent company at the Dutch court. To be precise, they institute proceedings against the Shell’s Nigerian subsidiary – Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria Ltd and against the British-Dutch Shell parent companies – Royal Dutch Shell Plc (UK), with office in The Hague; Shell Petroleum N.V. (a Dutch company) and the ‘Shell’ Transport and Trading Company Ltd (a British company). It is this corporate structure that brings the Nigerian farmers to the court in The Hague and paves the way for the jurisdiction of Dutch courts.
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Jurisdiction of Dutch courts: anchor defendant in the Netherlands and sufficient connection
Both the first instance court (in 2009) and the court of appeal at The Hague (in appeal in 2015) hold that the Dutch courts have jurisdiction. The ruling of the Court of Appeal is available in English and contains a detailed motivation of the grounds of jurisdiction of the Dutch courts. See in particular at [3.3] – [3.9].
Claim against Shell parent company/companies. Dutch courts have jurisdiction to hear the claim against Shell Petroleum based on art. 2(1) Brussels I Regulation, as the company has its registered office in the Netherlands. Furthermore, the jurisdiction of Dutch courts to hear the claims against Royal Dutch Shell is based on art. 2(1) in conjunction with art. 60(1) Brussels I Regulation and the jurisdiction over claims to Shell Transport and Trading Company – on art. 6(1) and art. 24 Brussels I Regulation.
Claim against Shell’s Nigerian subsidiary. The jurisdiction of the Dutch courts to hear the claim against Shell’s Nigerian subsidiary is based on art. 2(1) in conjunction with art. 60(1) Brussels I Regulation and on art. 7(1) of the Dutch Code of civil procedure (DCCP). Art. 7(1) deals with multiple defendants. By virtue of art. 7(1) DCCP, if the Dutch court with jurisdiction to hear the claim against one defendant (in this case this is the Royal Dutch Shell), has also the jurisdiction to hear the claims against co-defendant(s), ‘provided the claims against the various defendants are connected to the extent that reasons of efficiency justify a joint hearing’. The jurisdiction on the claim against the so-called ‘anchor defendant’ (for instance, the parent company) can thus carry with itself the jurisdiction on the other, connected, claims against other defendants.
Both the first instance court and the court in appeal found that the claims were sufficiently connected, despite the contentions of Shell. The Shell’s contentions were twofold. First, Shell stated that the claimants abused procedural law, because the claims against Royal Dutch Shall were ‘obviously bound to fail and for that reason could not serve as a basis for jurisdiction as provided in art. 7(1) DCCP’ (at [3.1] in the 2015 ruling). According to Shell, the claim was bound to fail, because the oil leaks were caused by sabotage, in which case Shell would be exempt from liability under the applicable Nigerian law. This contention was dismissed: the claim was not necessarily bound to fail, according to the first instance court. The appellate court added that it was too early to assume that the oil spill was caused by sabotage. Second, Shell contested the jurisdiction of the Dutch courts because the parent companies could not reasonably foresee that they would be summoned in the Netherlands for the claims as the ones in the case. Dismissing this contention the court of appeal at The Hague stated in the 2015 ruling that ‘in the light of (i) the ongoing developments in the field of foreign direct liability claims (cf. the cases instituted in the USA against Shell for the alleged involvement of the company in human rights violations; Bowoto v. Chevron Texaco (09-15641); Kiobel v Royal Dutch Petroleum Co., 133 S. Ct. 1659 (2013), as well as Lubbe v. Cape Plc. [2000] UKHL 41), added to (ii) the many oil spills that occurred annually during the extraction of oil in Nigeria, (iii) the legal actions that have been conducted for many years about this (for over 60 years according to Shell), (iv) the problems these oil spills present to humans and the environment and (v) the increased attention for such problems, it must have been reasonably foreseeable’ for the parent companies taken to court with jurisdiction with regard to Royal Dutch Shell (see the 2015 ruling at [3.6].
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Application of (substantive) Nigerian law
Substantive law. All claims addressed in the Court of Appeal ruling of 29 January 2021 are assessed according to Nigerian law. This is the law of the state where the spill occurred, the ensuing damage occurred and where the Shell’s Nigerian subsidiary (managed and monitored by Shell) has its registered office. The events that are the subject of litigation occurred in 2004-2007 and fall outside the temporal scope of Rome II. Applicable law is defined based on the Dutch conflict of laws rules on torts, namely art. 3(1) and (2) Wet Conflictenrecht Onrechtmatige Daad (see the first instance ruling at [4.10]).
Procedural matters. Perhaps because the case of damage to environment as the one in the discussed case, the application of substantive law is strictly tied to the evidence, the court goes on to specify private international law with further finesse. It mentions explicitly that procedural matters are regulated by the Dutch code of civil procedure. In the meantime, the substantive law aspects of the procedure, including the question which sanctions can be imposed, are governed by the lex causae (Nigerian law). The same holds true for substantive law of evidence, including the specific rules on the burden of proof relating to a particular legal relationship. The other, general matters relating to the burden of proof and evidence are regulated by the lex fori, thus the Dutch law of civil procedure (at [3.1]).
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The ruling of The Hague Court of Appeal
In its the ruling, the Dutch court holds Shell Nigeria liable for damage resulting from the leaks of pipelines in Oruma and Goi. Nigerian law provides for a high threshold of burden of proof that rests on the one who invokes sabotage of the pipelines (in this case, Shell). The fact of sabotage must be (evidenced to be) beyond reasonable doubt. Shell could not provide for such evidence for the pipelines in Oruma and Goi. Furthermore, Shell has not undertaken sufficient steps for the cleaning and limiting environmental damage. Shell Nigeria is therefore liable for the damage caused by the leaks in the pipelines. The amount of the damage to be compensated is still to be decided. The relevant procedure will follow up. The ruling is, however, not limited to this. Shell is also ordered to build at one of the pipelines (the Oruma-pipeline) a Leak Detection System (LDS), so that the future possible leaks could be swiftly noticed and future damage to the environment can be limited. This order is made to Shell Nigeria and to the parent companies.
Spills at Oruma and Goi are are two out of three oil spills. The procedure on the third claim – the procedure regarding the well at Ikot Ada Udo will continue: the reason for the oil spill is not yet clear and the next hearing has been scheduled.
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Human rights litigation and Rome II
This Shell case at the Dutch court is one in a series of cases where human rights and corporate responsibility are central. Increasingly, it seems, victims of environmental damage and foundations fighting for environmental protection can celebrate victories. In the introduction we mentioned the English Supreme Court ruling in Okpaby v Shell [2021] UKSC 3 of February 2021. In this case the Supreme Court reversed judgments by the Court of Appeal and the High Court in which the claim by Nigerian farmers brought against Shell’s parent company and its subsidiary in Nigeria had been struck out (see also Geert van Calster’s blog, guest post by Robert McCorquodale). Also there is a growing body of doctrinal work on human right violations in other countries, corporate social responsibility, due diligence and the intricacies of private international law, as a quick search on the present blog also indicates.
From a European private international law perspective, as also the discussion above shows, the Brussels Ibis Regulation and the Rome II Regulation are key. The latter Regulation has been subject of an evaluation study commissioned by the European Commission over the past year, and the final report is expected in the next months. Apart from evaluating ten years of operation of this Regulation, one of the focal points is the issue of cross-border corporate violations of human rights. The question is whether the present rules provide an adequate framework for assessing the applicable law in these cases. As discussed in point 5 above, in the Dutch Shell case the court concluded that Nigerian law applied, which may not necessarily be in the best interest of environmental protection. This was based on Dutch conflict rules applicable before the Rome II Regulation became applicable, but Art. 4 Rome II would in essence lead to the same result. For environmental protection, however, Art. 7 Rome II may come to the rescue as it enables victims to make a choice for the law of the country in which the event giving rise to damage occurred instead of having the law of the country in which the damage occurs of Art. 4 applied. In a similar vein, the European Parliament in its draft report with recommendations to the Commission on corporate due diligence and corporate accountability, dated 11 September 2020, proposes to incorporate a general ubiquity rule in art. 6a, enabling a choice of law for victims of business-related human rights violations. In such cases a choice could be made for the law of the country in which the event giving rise to the damage occurred, or the law of the country in which the parent company has its domicile, or, where it does not have a domicile in a Member State, the law of the country where it operates. This draft report, which also addresses the jurisdiction rules under the Brussels Ibis Regulation was briefly discussed on this blog in an earlier blogpost by Jan von Hein.
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Shell and climate continued: The Hague court strikes again
Today, all eyes were on the next move of The Hague District Court in an environmental claim brought against Royal Dutch Shell Plc (RDS). It concerns a collective action under the (revised) Dutch collective action act (see earlier on this blog by Hoevenaars & Kramer, and extensively Tzankova & Kramer 2021), brought – once again by Milieudefensie, also on behalf of 17,379 individual claimants, and by six other foundations (among others Greenpeace). The claim boils down to requesting the court to order Shell to reduce emissions. First, the court extensively deals with the admissibility and representativeness of the claimants as part of the new collective action act (art. 3:305a Dutch Civil Code). Second, the court assesses the international environmental law, regulation and policy framework, including the UN Climate Convention, the IPCC, UNEP, the Paris Agreement as well as European law and policy and Dutch law and policy.
Third, and perhaps most interesting for the readers of this blog, the court assesses the applicable law, as the claim concerns the global activities of Shell. As Weller has highlighted in his blogpost that discussion mostly evolves around Art. 7 Rome II. Milieudefensie pleaded that Art. 7 should, pursuant to its choice, lead to the applicability of Dutch law and, should this provision not lead to Dutch law, on the basis of Art. 4(1) Rome II. In establishing the place where the event giving rise to the damage occurs the court states that ‘An important characteristic of the environmental damage and imminent environmental damage in the Netherlands and the Wadden region, as raised in this case, is that every emission of CO2 and other greenhouse gases, anywhere in the world and caused in whatever manner, contributes to this damage and its increase.’ Milieudefensie holds RDS liable in its capacity as policy-setting entity of the Shell group. RDS pleads for a restrictive interpretation and argues that corporate policy is a preparatory act that falls outside the scope of Art. 7 as ‘the mere adoption of a policy does not cause damage’. However, The Hague Court finds this approach too narrow and agrees with the claimants that Dutch law applies on the basis of Art. 7 and that, in so far as the action seeks to protect the interests of Dutch residents, this also leads to the applicability of Dutch law on the basis of Art. 4.
The judgment of the court, and that’s what has been all over the Dutch and international media, is that it orders ‘RDS, both directly and via the companies and legal entities it commonly includes in its consolidated annual accounts and with which it jointly forms the Shell group, to limit or cause to be limited the aggregate annual volume of all CO2 emissions into the atmosphere (Scope 1, 2 and 3) due to the business operations and sold energy-carrying products of the Shell group to such an extent that this volume will have reduced by at least net 45% at end 2030, relative to 2019 levels’.
To be continued – undoubtedly.
The Role of the International Social Service in the History of Private International Law
by Roxana Banu
The “International Social Service” (initially named “International Migration Service”) was created in 1920 by the Young Women Christian Association as a network of social work branches helping migrant women and children. In 1924 it became an independent transnational network of social work agencies offering socio-legal services to migrants and refugees, irrespective of gender, religion or race. It grew exponentially since then and is now present in over 120 countries helping more than 75,000 families each year. Since its inception and largely unbeknownst to private international law scholars, it worked (and continues to work) on virtually every aspect of transnational family law. In the first half of the twentieth century the ISS used its extensive database of social work case records to draft expert opinions on private international law matters for the League of Nations, bar associations, the US Congress, the Hague Conference on Private International Law and others. It devised and coordinated interdisciplinary teams of experts to conduct research on cross-border family maintenance and cross-border adoptions. It experimented with all sorts of legal arguments in order to push for new claims in private international law, especially in U.S. courts.
The ISS has been hiding in plain sight in the history of private international law since the 1920s. Anyone lucky enough to visit ISS-USA’s archives at the University of Minnesota would be astonished by ISS’s extensive engagement with virtually every aspect of transnational family law. During the first half of the 20th century the ISS left no stone untouched in an effort to devise an international socio-legal framework for cross-border family maintenance claims. It lobbied scholars, consuls, employers, national legislators and international organizations; its global network of social workers worked together to inform women living abroad when their husbands attempted to file divorce proceedings in the U.S.; it experimented with entirely new and imaginative legal arguments to convince U.S. courts to assume jurisdiction over foreign women’s maintenance claims against their husbands living in the U.S.; and it submitted expert evidence to the Child Welfare Committee of the League of Nations.
Unbeknownst to contemporary private international law scholars, the report sent by Ernst Rabel to the League of Nations on cross-border maintenance claims had in fact been commissioned by the ISS and based almost entirely on its case files. The entire project on cross-border maintenance claims was in fact the brainchild of Suzanne Ferriere, ISS’s General Secretary until 1945 and thereafter its assistant director and one of only three women on the International Committee of the Red Cross during WWII.
In the 1930s the ISS was involved in the debates on the nationality of married women at the League of Nations. Unlike other feminist organizations, which were skeptical of the League’s attempt to conceptualize the issue of married women’s nationality as a conflict of laws question, the ISS offered an analysis of its case records precisely to press the League to become more conscious and more precise about the conflict-of-laws dimensions of the issue of married women’s nationality. It continued to press for legal aid for foreign citizens, to help foreigners bring inheritance and property claims either in the U.S. or in their countries of origin and to press U.S. and foreign courts to co-operate with each other in cross-border family law matters.
In between the two World Wars several ISS social workers were responsible for the relocation of Jewish children to the U.S., devising new rules on cross-border guardianship and adoption almost from scratch. After the Second World War ISS personnel collaborated with the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration in setting up cross-border adoption and guardianship standards for displaced unaccompanied minors. Meanwhile, back in the U.S., ISS members petitioned the US Congress to raise the quota for adopted children and to disallow adoptions by proxy.
Most of the issues the ISS had been working on in the first half of the 20th century belonged to an unchartered private international law territory. With modest funds, ISS branches often engaged in detailed legal research projects. Among many other gems, ISS USA’s archive contains numerous article clippings, extensive correspondence and research inquiries sent to universities, legislators or other social workers in an attempt to piece together private international law concepts and techniques that were unknown even to legal practitioners and scholars at the time.
Recovering the history of ISS’s engagement with private international questions is worthwhile in itself. But even more remarkably, one could zoom in and out of the ISS and thereby begin to write an entirely new history of private international law. Zooming in, one is exposed to a surprising joined history between transnational social work and private international law. As the ISS was pioneering new transnational case-law methods, it placed private international law squarely in its center, to the dismay of both social workers and private international law scholars. Reading social workers’ forays into private international law together with their writings on transnational social work methods and on multiculturalism offers a new window into private international law’s and social workers’ engagements with the foreign, contradictory and paradoxical as they may be. Zeroing in on the ISS as a private international law agent also exposes a whole range of women – social workers, philanthropists, ambassadors’ wives, Hollywood actresses – that are entirely unknown to a field that it yet to write its gendered history.
Zooming out of the ISS offers yet another lens through which to re-write private international law’s history. On the one hand, ISS combined a micro-analysis on individual cases and individual families with a macro-analysis of the geopolitical context causing hardship for families across borders. Tapping into this dual standpoint presses private international law, through the eyes of the ISS, to reconstruct its relationship with migration law and policy and with the field of international relations. On the other hand, moving the analysis from the ISS outward means joining private international law back with the extensive network that the ISS itself was relying on when doing its work. Among many other remarkable figures, this network exposes Jewish women émigrés to the Americas who were using their dual-legal background to help migrants or who had managed to become private international law professors in their own right. For example, although most would be familiar with Werner Goldschmidt’s work in Private International Law, few would know that his sister-in-law, Ilse Jaffe Goldschmidt opened an ISS branch in Venezuela (the Nansen Medal was awarded to its director general, Maryluz Schloeter Paredes, in 1980) and worked extensively on cross-border adoption matters.
Engaging with the history of the ISS means retracing an incredible range of connections between private and public international, migration law and policy, foreign affairs and social work, connections which were often built and fostered by the ISS itself. The archive contains interviews, studies in refugee camps, cross-branches socio-legal research studies, expert opinions offered to a whole range of actors, reports and opinion pieces on a broad set of geopolitical and socio-legal topics, as well as confidential letters sent between the branches cataloging the challenges of their unprecedented work. Whether one is interested to recover the range of private international law projects that the ISS was involved in or engages with the ISS as a window through which to gage a new history of private international law, its extensive archives in every corner of the world are waiting to be explored.
Roxana Banu is a Lecturer in Private International Law at Queen Mary University of London, Faculty of Law. Roxana researches on legal history and feminist perspectives on private international law. She is the author of Nineteenth Century Perspectives on Private International Law (OUP, 2018) and “A Relational Feminist Perspective on Private International Law,” awarded the ASIL Prize for the best paper in Private International Law in 2016. She is currently writing a book on a gendered history of private international law, which includes a more detailed discussion of the role of the ISS in the history of private international law. She offers a brief portrait of the women of the ISS in Roxana Banu, “Forgotten Female Actors in the History of Private International Law. The Women of the International Social Service 1920-1960,” in Immi Tallgren ed., Portraits of Women in International Law (forthcoming with OUP, 2021).
originally posted at www.iss-usa.org March 3, 2021
News
Promulgation of the Interpretation of the Supreme People’s Court on Several Issues Concerning the Application of International Treaties and International Practices in the Trial of Foreign-related Civil and Commercial Cases
By Professor Du Tao* and Yang Zhenni**
On December 28, 2023, the Supreme People’s Court (SPC) held a press conference on Judicial Interpretations and Typical Cases on the Application of International Treaties and International Practices in Foreign-related Civil and Commercial Cases, deliberating the Interpretation of the Supreme People’s Court on Several Issues Concerning the Application of International Treaties and International Practices in the Trial of Foreign-related Civil and Commercial Cases (Interpretation) and some related typical cases. The Interpretations was adopted by the Trial Committee of the Supreme People’s Court at its 1908th meeting on December 5, 2023, which will come into force on January 1, 2024. We translated the press announcement as follows:
Out now: The Cambridge Handbook of Comparative Law (by Siems and Jen Yap)
There is no doubt that private international law works in close cooperation with comparative law. Horatia Muir Watt, for example, characterises the relationship between the two disciplines as “complementary” (H M Watt, “Private International Law”, in J M. Smits (ed.), Elgar Encyclopedia of Comparative Law (2nd ed., Edward Elgar Publishing, 2012) p. 701). Similarly, Mathias Reimann describes it as “intimate” (M Reimann, “Comparative Law and Private International Law”, in M Reimann and R Zimmermann (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Law (2nd ed., OUP, 2019) p. 1340). Meanwhile, Ralf Michaels, another distinguished scholar of comparative and private international law, considers that “in private international law scholarship, comparison has always been prominent” (Ralf Michaels, “Comparative Law and Private International Law”, in J Basedow et al. (eds.), Encyclopedia of Private International law –Volume I (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2017) p. 416).
Understanding foreign legal systems and the diversity of the solutions dealing with common problems and issues has always been crucial for private international law scholars and researchers. This enables them to refine the techniques and theories of private international law, and ultimately serves one of the most important goals of private international law: the coordination of different legal systems.
Out Now: Private International Law in East Asia: From Imitation to Innovation and Exportation (Gaillard/Nadakavukaren Schefer)
Hart Studies in Private International Law – Asia has officially released its 9th Volume in the Series as an open-access book. This edition, edited by Olivier Gaillard and Krista Nadakavukaren Schefer, is titled Private International Law in East Asia: From Imitation to Innovation and Exportation (Hart Publishing, 2024).
