Conflict of Laws

The Conflict of Laws, or Private International Law, is concerned with private (frequently, commercial) law cases, where the facts which give rise to litigation contain one or more foreign elements. A court may be asked to give relief for breach of a commercial contract made abroad, or to be performed abroad, or to which one or both of the parties is not English. It may be asked to grant relief in respect of an alleged tort occurring abroad, or allow a claimant to trace and recover funds which were fraudulently removed, and so on. In each case, the court must decide whether to apply laws of English or foreign origin to determine the matters in dispute. This exercise in identifying the law applicable (choice of law) is the second of three areas around which this course in the Conflict of Laws is centred. Prior to this comes the issue of jurisdiction; that is, when an English court will find that it has, and will exercise, jurisdiction over a defendant who is not English, or over a dispute which may have little to do with England or with English law. Closely allied to this is the question of what, if anything, may be done to impede proceedings which are underway in a foreign court but which (in the view of one of the parties or of the court) really should not be there at all. The remaining third of the course is concerned with the recognition and enforcement of foreign judgments, to determine what effect, if any, these have in the English legal order.

Notwithstanding the United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the European Union, the Conflict of Laws in England retains an EU Law dimension, particularly in relation to choice of law for contractual and non-contractual obligations. International law instruments, particularly those concluded by the Hague Conference on Private International Law, also play an increasingly significant role in the English legal landscape.

The purpose of the course is to examine the areas studied by reference to case law, statute and scholarship, and to aim at acquiring an understanding of the rules, their operation and inter-relationship, as would be necessary to deal with problems arising in practice in litigation with a cross border element. Those taking the course will also gain an understanding of the concepts, practical applications and theory of private international law, relevant to its application in legal systems around the world.

Assessment is by way of examination at the end of the course.

The teaching team for the subject comprises Professor Andrew Dickinson, Associate Professors Roxana Banu and Brooke Marshall and Dr Johannes Ungerer.