Category Archives: Conflict of Laws
Felix Berner, ‘Choice of law rules under pressure – the growing power of state interests and vested rights in private international law’
ABSTRACT This article challenges the notion that choice of law consists merely of rules designating an applicable law. Instead, it argues for a system resting on three pillars: choice of law rules, state interests and vested rights. It demonstrates how state interests and vested rights have become much more powerful in recent years, exerting pressure […]
Michael Green, ‘Philosophy and Private International Law’
ABSTRACT This entry concerns how descriptive conflicts theory (which concerns what conflicts law is) and normative conflicts theory (which concerns what conflicts law should be) have relied, and can rely, on philosophy. Concerning descriptive conflicts theory, it focuses on how conflicts law can be understood from the perspective of Anglophone philosophy of law. Of particular […]
Okoli and Emeasoba, ‘The role of English public policy in promoting the circulation of electronic trade documents’
ABSTRACT The Model Law on Electronic Transferable Records (2017) enabled the use and transfer of electronic and digital trade documents across borders. This Model Law influenced the enactment of the 2023 Electronic Trade Documents Act (ETDA) in the United Kingdom, which is a pioneer in this regard. In implementing the Model Law, however, the UK […]
‘Postdoc Position: “Fashion’s PLACE – Private (International) Law and Circular Economy”’
The University of Edinburgh is recruiting a postdoctoral research fellow in private international law to work on an exciting new research project funded by the UKRI Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and the German Research Foundation (DFG) entitled ‘Fashion’s PLACE – Private (International) Law and Circular Economy’. The project explores the private law and […]
Frank Pham, ‘Comparative Law of Cross-Border Patent Infringement: A Jurisprudential Analysis of the United States and Japan’
ABSTRACT Historically, patent enforcement relied on the strict principle of territoriality, a doctrine that is increasingly destabilized by distributed networks, cloud computing, and the placement of servers overseas. This research provides a comprehensive comparative analysis of how the United States and Japan address the jurisprudential challenges of cross-border patent infringement and divided multi-actor infringement within […]
Gerhard Wagner, ‘Procedural Agreements: A Normative Framework’
ABSTRACT The paper addresses the essential questions of agreements on questions of procedure, ie their classification as procedural or substantive and their admissibility under the applicable law of civil procedure. Procedural agreements touch upon the public interest, challenge the self-conception of public courts and raise concerns with a view to the protection of weaker parties. […]
Call for Papers: ‘Crises in Private International Law’: 6th Early Career Researchers´ Conference, Munich, 9-10 April 2027
We welcome contributions on conflict-of-laws and international civil procedural law at the national, European, and international levels. The conference language is German; however, we also welcome warmly presentations in English … (more)
Adriani Dori, ‘The Methodological Influence of European Private International Law on Domestic Legal Systems: A Downstream Analysis’
ABSTRACT The European Area of Freedom, Security and Justice (AFSJ) is the key factor for the smooth operation of the Internal Market, aimed at ensuring the free movement of people, goods, and services within the EU while maintaining security and justice for more than 450m market participants. Private International Law (PIL) plays a significant role […]
Shashwat Pathak, ‘Private Law Challenges of AI-Generated Content in Cross-Border Digital Markets’
ABSTRACT When an AI system trained on copyrighted data in the United States, deployed by an Indian user, and hosted on a Chinese platform generates a deepfake that defames a French citizen, which jurisdiction’s law governs the liability? This paper argues that the answer is currently ‘none’. The rapid proliferation of AI-generated content (AIGC) has […]
Niles-Weed and Sitkoff, ‘It’s 10 PM, Do You Know Where Your Trust Is Sited?’
ABSTRACT There is broad consensus that the law of conflict of trust laws is outdated. Both the American Law Institute and the Uniform Law Commission have initiated reform projects to address this obsolescence. But there is no consensus around what went wrong or how to fix it. This Chapter, prepared for the 2026 Heckerling Institute […]