Legal Journals

Mills on Federalism in the EU and in the US

By Gilles Cuniberti

Alex Mills, who is a lecturer at Cambridge University, has posted Federalism in the EU and the US: Subsidiarity, Private Law and the Conflict of Laws on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

The United States has long been a source of influence and inspiration to the developing federal system in the European Union. As E.U. federalism matures, increasingly both systems may have the opportunity to profit from each others? experience in federal regulatory theory and practice. This article analyses aspects of the federal ordering in each system, comparing both historical approaches and current developments. It focuses on three legal topics, and the relationship between them: (1) the federal regulation of matters of private law; (2) rules of the conflict of laws, which play a critical role in regulating cross-border litigation in an era of global communications, travel and trade; and (3) ?subsidiarity?, which is a key constitutional principle in the European Union, and arguably also plays an implicit and under-analyzed role in U.S. federalism. The central contention of this article is that the treatment of each of these areas of law is related ? that they should be understood collectively as part of the range of competing regulatory strategies and techniques of each federal system. It is not suggested that ?solutions? from one system can be simply transplanted to the other, but rather that the experiences of each federal order demonstrate the interconnectedness of regulation in these three subject areas, offering important insights from which each system might benefit.

The paper is forthcoming in the University of Pennsylvania Journal of International Law. It can be freely downloaded here.

Related posts:

1. Publication: Mills on The Confluence of Public and Private International Law Alex Mills (Selwyn College, Cambridge) has published a monograph, based...
2. Symeonides on American Federalism and Conflicts Dean Symeon Symeonides has posted American Federalism and Private International...
3. Observations from the Intersection of Private International Law and Civil Procedure in the USA Richard D. Freer (Emory University) has posted an article on...

Full post as published by Conflict of Laws on November 17, 2010 (boomark / email).