The Application Of Foreign Law

During the last decade Europe has undertaken an active and broad process of harmonisation of choice-of-law rules within the EU. However, this drastic movement towards a harmonised system has so far left aside a highly relevant issue: the application by judicial and non-judicial authorities of the foreign law. In full contrast to the little attention so far paid to it in the EU, this issue is said to be the crux of the conflict of laws. It violates legal certainty and contradicts the objective of ensuring full access to justice to all European citizens within the EU. This book provides a comparative study of the existing situation in all EU member states and drafts some basic principles for a future European instrument. It will become a highly useful tool for lawyers, judges, notaries, land registries, academics, prosecutors etc.

Judicial Cosmopolitanism: The Use of Foreign Law in Contemporary Constitutional Systems offers a detailed account of the use of foreign law by supreme and constitutional Courts of Europe, America and East Asia.

This work presents a thorough investigation of existing rules and features of the treatment of foreign law in various jurisdictions. Private international law (conflict of laws) and civil procedure rules concerning the application and ascertainment of foreign law differ significantly from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. Combining general and individual national reports, this volume demonstrates when and how foreign law is applied, ascertained, interpreted and reviewed by appeal courts. Traditionally, conflicts lawyers have been faced with two contrasting approaches. Civil law jurisdictions characterize foreign law as “law” and provide for the ex officio application and ascertainment of foreign law by judges. Common law jurisdictions consider foreign law as “fact” and require that parties plead and prove foreign law. A closer look at various reports, however, reveals more differentiated features with their own nuances among civil law jurisdictions, and the difference of the treatment of foreign law from other facts in common law jurisdictions. This challenges the appropriacy of the conventional “law-fact” dichotomy. This book further examines the need for facilitating access to foreign law. After carefully analyzing the benefits and drawbacks of existing instruments, this book explores alternative methods for enhancing access to foreign law and considers practical ways of obtaining information on foreign law. It remains to be seen whether and the extent to which legal systems around the world will integrate and converge in their treatment of foreign law.

The public policy exception in private international law is designed to provide a national backstop in the application of foreign laws. This book provides detailed and practical comparative coverage of the use of public policy in the context of private international law across a number of important jurisdictions spanning three continents.

to Seeking the answer to the three basic questions of contempo rary private international law, I also deemed it essential to out line to the reader the historical development of the different concepts of this particular branch of law, for without the know ledge of this history it is impossible to understand the contempo rary problems. The fact that private international law oscillates between public international law and substantive municipal law as it is applied in individual countries creates considerable problems in both theory and practice. I have tried to deal with these problems in the third part of my study, concerning "universa lism" and "nationalism" in the doctrine of private international law, as well as in its fourth part, which is devoted to the object and nature of this law and its place in the overall system of law. The character of private international law, ensuing from the plurality of municipal laws - which also characterize the origin and existence of comparative jurisprudence - in spired me to produce the fifth part of this study, which prima rily tries to expJain the theoretical problems of comparative jurisprudence but does so - defining its objectives and possibili ties - in order to underline at the same time its role in private international law and in the law of international trade.

This Oxford Handbook ambitiously seeks to lay the groundwork for the relatively new field of comparative foreign relations law. Comparative foreign relations law compares and contrasts how nations, and also supranational entities (for example, the European Union), structure their decisions about matters such as entering into and exiting from international agreements, engaging with international institutions, and using military force, as well as how they incorporate treaties and customary international law into their domestic legal systems. The legal materials that make up a nation's foreign relations law can include constitutional law, statutory law, administrative law, and judicial precedent, among other areas. This book consists of 46 chapters, written by leading authors from around the world. Some of the chapters are empirically focused, others are theoretical, and still others contain in-depth case studies. In addition to being an invaluable resource for scholars working in this area, the book should be of interest to a wide range of lawyers, judges, and law students. Foreign relations law issues are addressed regularly by lawyers working in foreign ministries, and globalization has meant that domestic judges, too, are increasingly confronted by them. In addition, private lawyers who work on matters that extend beyond their home countries often are required to navigate issues of foreign relations law. An increasing number of law school courses in comparative foreign relations law are also now being developed, making this volume an important resource for students as well. Comparative foreign relations law is a newly emerging field of study and teaching, and this volume is likely to become a key reference work as the field continues to develop.