Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Legal Commentary Blogs -> LawPundit

Legal Commentary

: LawPundit

Globalization, The Changing World and Legal Order, Private International Law, Territorial Legal Systems, Cyberspace, Choice of Law

By Andis Kaulins

Conflict of Laws blog, in association with the Journal of Private International Law and sponsored by Clifford Chance LLP, carries a short article on Reshaping Private International Law in a Changing World by Horatia Muir-Watt, Professor of Private International and Comparative Law at the University of Paris I (Panthéon-Sorbonne).

This atricle raises important issues regarding globalization and the changing modern legal world. Muir-Watt touches upon three main areas:

1. Choice of law and economic due process
2. The ?new unilateralism?
3. Conflicts of public law.

She writes in the first paragraph of her article:

"The past few decades have witnessed profound changes in the world order ? changes affecting the nature of sovereignty or the significance of territory ? which require measuring the methodological impact of political and technological transformations on traditional ways of thinking about allocation of prescriptive and adjudicatory authority as between states. Myriads of issues arise in this respect within the new global environment, such as the extraterritorial reach of regulatory law, the decline of the private/public divide in the international field, the renewed foundations of adjudicatory jurisdiction (particularly in cyberspace), the implications of individual and collective access to justice in the international sphere, the impact of fundamental rights on choice of law, the ability of parties to cross regulatory frontiers and the subsequent transformation of the relationship between law and market. Indeed, one of the most important issues raised by globalization from a private international law perspective is the extent to which private economic actors are now achieving ?lift-off? from the sway of territorial legal systems. To some extent, traditional rules on jurisdiction, choice of law and recognition/enforcement of judgments and arbitral awards have favored the undermining of law?s (geographical) empire, which is already threatened by the increasing transparency of national barriers to cross-border trade and investment. Party mobility through choice of law and forum induces a worldwide supply and demand for legal products. When such a market is unregulated, the consequences of such legislative competition may be disastrous."

Read the entire article here.

Hat tip to EU Law Blog.

Full post as published by LawPundit on April 14, 2008 (boomark / email).