Tag Archive for: English Law

Virtual Workshop (in English) on Tuesday, 3 November 2026: Brooke Marshall in our series on “Current Research in Private International Law”

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On Tuesday, November 3, 2026, the Hamburg Max Planck Institute will host its monthly virtual workshop Current Research in Private International Law at 11:00 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. (CEST).

Brooke Marshall (University of Oxford) will speak, in English, about the topic

 

                                                                                                                  “Forum legis in English Law”

 

About the Speaker:

Brooke Marshall is an Associate Professor of the Faculty of Law, University of Oxford, and a Fellow of St Edmund Hall. Her research examines intersections both within the field of private international law and between the field and other areas of law and legal practice. Her work has a doctrinal foundation in international commercial dispute resolution and engages with normative and comparative questions raised by cross-border relationships.

About the Topic:

An initial determination by an English court as to the law that should apply to a cross-border dispute is commonplace at the jurisdictional stage, directly affecting both the assumption and exercise of jurisdiction. This project, jointly undertaken with Dr Roxana Banu, maps the substantial and increasing role played by choice of law in the jurisdictional enquiry. Focussing on the governing law gateways for service outside the jurisdiction, it provides a theoretical, historical, and doctrinal account of England’s forum legis. We explore its imperial roots, the results it produces in the case law, and whether basing the adjudicatory jurisdiction of English courts on the applicability of English law can be normatively justified in routine commercial cases.

About the Virtual Workshop Series:

The virtual workshop series “Current Research in Private International Law” is organised by Ralf Michaels and Antonia Sittig. The series features leading national and international scholars 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 (doctoral candidates and students are expressly invited).

 

The presentation will be followed by open discussion. All are welcome. More information and sign-up here.

If you want to be invited to these events in the future, please write to veranstaltungen@mpipriv.de.

Copyright, Targeting and Geo-Blocking: The CJEU Stirs the Pot

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By Graham Smith, Of Counsel, Bird & Bird LLP, London, UK

The CJEU’s recent copyright decision in Anne Frank endorses state of the art geo-blocking as an effective way of shielding a website from the different copyright laws of another EU Member State. Although the result on the facts is welcome, the potential implications of the Court’s underlying reasoning are less so. At a principled level, the judgment creates post-Brexit divergence with the UK courts’ targeting approach to cross-border online copyright infringement.

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Two Interesting Recent Articles related to Private International Law

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Williams C Iheme, “The Overdependence of African Courts and Businesses on English Law and Forum:
The Negative Repercussions on the Development of African Legal and Economic Systems”  (2024) 15 Pravni Zapisi, pp. 151-190

The uncritical transplantation of English law by Anglophone-African legislators and judges, and their failure to sufficiently adapt English legal concepts to suit the idiosyncratic socioeconomic conditions in Africa, arguably contribute to the perpetuation of English law’s hegemony therein. It is argued that the overdependence on English law and courts by African businesses in resolving contractual disputes
is not necessarily due to any alleged stellar qualities of the former, but largely due to the over-marketing of the English legal system’s competence by its apologists. The analysis uses piquant examples to elicit some adverse effects of using/overreliance on the English law and forum by African businesses in resolving contractual disputes.

To reposition from the lengthened shadow of English law, Anglophone African legislators, judges and legal scholars, must craft autochthonous legal processes that suit Africa’s tastes and socioeconomic milieu.

 

Georgia Antonopoulou, “Forum Marketing in International Commercial Courts?” (2024) Oxford Journal of Legal Studies

Forum selling is a legal term used to describe the practices of courts and judges, geared towards attracting cases, such as increasing the predictability of judgments or speeding up trials. However, do courts also go beyond forum selling to attract cases? Taking international commercial courts as its focus, this article explores how these courts market themselves to attract cases and coins the term ‘forum marketing’. It demonstrates that the courts’ recent establishment, coupled with their voluntary jurisdiction, creates a compelling context, which encourages them to engage in forum marketing. The article argues that forum marketing is not merely a byproduct of the competition in commercial dispute resolution, but a powerful mechanism with deeply persuasive, normative and, effectively, structuring properties. Forum marketing is central to disseminating and reinforcing a pro-business approach in civil justice, consequently setting the stage for procedural inequality and a one per cent procedure.