Tag Archive for: Colonialism

The Double Face of Private International Law: Reconsidering Its Colonial Entanglements

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Originally posted here

Current Research in Private International Law at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law, Hamburg

  • Date: Dec 5, 2025
  • Time: 11:00 AM (Local Time Germany)
  • Location: online

About the speaker
Béligh Elbalti is a Professor at the Graduate School of Law and Politics, Osaka University. He is the author of numerous academic publications, primarily in the field of private international law, including blog posts on conflictoflaws.net. His research focuses on the development of private international law at both the national and international levels, with particular emphasis on Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.

About the Topic
In its general discourse, private international law (conflict of laws) is often presented as a discipline grounded in principles such as sovereignty, the equality of states, and comity. Its defining traits are said to flow from this premise of equality between legal orders, including its claim to neutrality, its pursuit of international harmony in cross-border cases, and its role in coordinating diverse legal systems. However, it is striking that private international law developed in an international context marked by domination, inequality, and subordination, a context that challenged the very premises on which the discipline claimed to rest.

Within this broader context, private international law appears to have played a dual role. On the one hand, it served as an instrument of colonial domination, particularly by denying its foundational premises to legal systems not regarded as “civilized”. In these contexts, instead of applying the ordinary methods of private international law, alternative mechanisms were employed to manage foreignness, most notably through systems of extraterritoriality – whether in the form of consular jurisdiction, mixed courts, or foreign courts operating in colonized or semi-colonized territories. On the other hand, private international law also functioned as an instrument for restoring sovereignty and achieving independence. The abolition and dismantling of extraterritorial regimes required colonized and semi-colonized states to meet the substantive and institutional conditions considered necessary for recognition as a “civilized nation”. This included, among other reforms, the establishment of a functioning system of private international law, alongside the adoption of substantive and procedural legal frameworks that guaranteed equal rights and protection for foreigners.

About the Virtual Workshop Series
The virtual workshop series “Current Research in Private International Law” is organised by Ralf Michaels and Philomena Hindermann. The series features guest speakers and Institute staff members who present and discuss their work on current developments and research topics in private international law. The workshops are geared to scholars who are researching in the field of private international law, but attendance is open to all individuals having an academic interest (including doctoral candidates and students).

The virtual lecture will be held as a video conference via Zoom. Please register no later than Thursday, 4 December 2025 using this LINK.

You will receive the login details on Thursday afternoon. If you do not receive an email containing the login data, please check your spam folder as well.

Rethinking Private International Law Through the Lens of Colonialism

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Last week (7 June 2025), I had this extraordinary opportunity to give a presentation at the 138th Annual Conference of the Japanese Association of Private International Law, which took place at Seinan Gakuin Daigaku, Fukuoka – Japan. The theme of my presentation was “Private International Law and Colonialism.” In this talk, I shared some preliminary thoughts on a topic that is both extraordinarily rich and complex. The following note offers some initial reflections based on that presentation (with a few adjustments) with the aim of contributing to ongoing discussion and encouraging deeper reflection.

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Badr on Religion, Colonialism, and Legal Pluralism: The Story and Legacy of the Egyptian Choice of Law Rules for Personal Status International and Interpersonal Conflicts of Law

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Yehya Badr (Associate Professor, College of Law, Al-Yamamah University, KSA) presents his recent publication entitled “Religion, Colonialism, and Legal Pluralism: The Story and Legacy of the Egyptian Choice of Law Rules for Personal Status International and Interpersonal Conflicts of Law“, published in the Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies, Issue 1 of Volume 31, 2024. The paper addresses the important issue of Egyptian choice of law rules for international and interpersonal conflicts of law.

The detailed summary, kindly provided by the author, reads as follows: Read more

PIL and (De)coloniality: For a Case-by-Case Approach of the Application of Postcolonial Law in European States

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Written by Sandrine Brachotte who obtained a PhD. in Law at Sciences Po, Paris and is a Guest Lecturer at UCLouvain (Saint-Louis, Brussels).

1. PIL and (De)coloniality in Europe

This post follows Susanne Gössl’s blog post series on ‘Colonialism and German PIL’ (especially s. 3 of post (1)) and offers a French perspective of the issue of PIL and (de)coloniality – not especially focused on French PIL but based on a francophone article to be published soon in the law and anthropology journal Droit et Culture. This article, called ‘For a decolonisation of law in the global era: analysis of the application of postcolonial law in European states’, is addressed to non-PIL-specialist scholars but builds on a European debate about PIL and (de)coloniality that has been nourished by scholars like Ralf Michaels, Horatia Muir Watt, Veronica Ruiz Abou-Nigm, as well as by Maria Ochoa, Roxana Banu, and Nicole Štýbnarová, notably at the occasion of the 2022 Edinburgh conference (reported about on this blog, where I had the chance the share a panel with them in relation to my PhD dissertation (see a short presentation on the EAPIL blog)).

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Colonialism and German PIL (3) – Imagined Hierachies

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This post is part of a series regarding Colonialism and the general structure of (German) Private International Law, based on a presentation I gave in spring 2023. See the introduction here.

As mentioned in the introduction, this series does not intent to automatically pass judgment on a norm or method influenced by colonialism as inherently negative. Instead, the aim is to reveal these influences and to initiate a first engagement with and awareness of this topic and to stimulate a discussion and reflection.

The first post (after the introduction) dealt with classic PIL and colonialism and already sparked a vivid discussion in the comments section. This second considered structures and values inherent in German or European law, implicitly resonating within the PIL and, thus, expanding those values to people and cases from other parts of the world.  The third category discusses an imagined hierarchy between the Global North and Global South that is sometimes inherent in private international law thinking, for instances where courts or legislators abstractly or paternalistically apply the public policy to “protect” individuals from foreign legal norms. This is especially evident in areas like underage marriages and unilateral divorce practices found inter alia in Islamic law.

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Colonialism and German PIL (2) – German and European Structures and Values

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This post is part of a series regarding Colonialism and the general structure of (German) Private International Law, based on a presentation I gave in spring 2023. See the introduction

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Colonialism and German PIL (1) – Colonial Structures in Traditional PIL

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This post is the first of a series regarding Colonialism and the general structure of (German) Private International Law, based on a presentation I gave in spring 2023. See the introduction here.

As mentioned in the introduction, this series does not intent to automatically pass judgment on a norm or method influenced by colonialism as inherently negative (I emphasise this because my experience shows that the impression quickly arises). Instead, the aim is to reveal these influences and to initiate a first engagement with and awareness of this topic and to stimulate a discussion and reflection.

The first category, to be discussed today, relates to the (sometimes unconscious) implementation and later continuation of the colonial structure in PIL – now and then.

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Colonialism and German Private International Law – Introduction to a Post Series

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In March 2023 I gave a talk at the conference of the German Society of International Law. The conference had the title “Colonial Continuities in International Law“ and my presentation focused on  “Continuation of colonialism in contemporary international law? – Foundations, structures, methods from the perspective of PIL“. Thus, I was exploring those foundations, basic structures, and fundamental methods of mainly German Private International Law (PIL) and whether and how they have been influenced by colonialism.

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