Embracing Diversity – The Role of the Hague Conference in the Creation of Universal Instruments

Author(s):  
Hans van Loon

The Hague Conference on Private International Law (HCCH) has been a laboratory for the development, and servicing, of legal instruments to handle the diversity of legal systems, in the interests of mobile people and of companies acting across borders. In addition to coordinating such diversity through rules on the conflict of laws and of jurisdiction of the courts, modern Hague Conventions have created machinery to facilitate direct cross-border cooperation among different national administrative authorities and courts. This chapter provides illustrations on how the HCCH has sought to bridge three types of diversity of legal systems: among federal, quasi-federal and unitary jurisdictions; Common Law and Civil Law jurisdictions as well as the varieties within them (including differences between the USA and other Common Law systems); and secular and religious systems. The chapter also highlights the importance of inclusive working methods, and the – existing and potential – complementarity of global human rights instruments and Hague Conventions.

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 134
Author(s):  
Ximei Wu ◽  
Abid Hussain Shah jillani

An attempt has been made to investigate the role of the doctrine of Lis Pendens in international commercial arbitration while making a comparison of civil and common law traditions. Arbitration is regarded to be less painful and an effective means for resolving any type of commercial disputes. Sources of the law to investigate Arbitration's regulation on a national, institutional, and international level. However, it is known that the lis pendens doctrine has been rarely codified; thus, scholarly writings and case laws were consulted by the research for determining its adoption and content. It is important to note that the lis pendens is initially regarded as a tool, which has been developed to manage the proceedings of parallel court on a domestic level. The study concludes while arguing that when it comes to civil law tradition, lis pendens is regarded as an independent doctrine in international commercial arbitration since it shares the same claim of being tried in various forums simultaneously. In contrast, lis alibi pendens in the jurisdiction of common law is not known as a doctrine, but it is viewed as one of many factors whole applying the forum non-convenience principle. Both civil and common law need identity between various parties and their claims to constitute lis pendens in two proceedings, and therefore, they have a conform and deep understanding of the concept.


2015 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 520-533 ◽  
Author(s):  
Khurram Parvez Raja ◽  
Alex Kostyuk

The paper outlines shareholder activism development in common law and civil law countries and identifies features of these legal systems that create preconditions and obstacles for shareholder activism. Our findings show that tendencies of shareholder activism depend on the type of the legal system, but also vary within the countries that share the same legal system. Thus, we conclude that the type of legal system is not the chief determinant of shareholder activism. A comparative analysis of shareholder activism in Germany and Ukraine (civil law countries) and the USA and the UK (common law countries) shows that the system of domestic corporate regulation, development of the stock market, companies’ capitalization and corporate governance influence the development of shareholder activism in equal measure.


Author(s):  
A. D. Shmelev

The paper discusses the role of linguistic examination in civil law and common law legal systems. It argues that while it is forensic linguistic expertise that often plays an important role in civil law systems, the lay people’s opinion is crucial in common law systems. It suggests that the best way to obtain adequate results for civil law systems (including the Russian legal system) is to combine the two approaches, that is, to make use of an expert linguistic analysis of the linguistic competence of lay speakers of the language in question. Various examples illustrate the point (among them the problems arising in civil suits of honor protection and business reputation defense as well as the famous “tomato case”, in which the United States Supreme Court addressed whether a tomato was classified as a fruit or a vegetable). In addition, the paper discusses vague wording and consequent difficulty of implementation of the “Federal Law on the National Language of the Russian Federation.”


Author(s):  
de Aguirre Cecilia Fresnedo

This chapter reflects on Uruguayan perspectives on the Hague Principles. In Uruguay, international commercial contracts are regulated by the following conventions: the Montevideo Treaty on International Civil Law of 1889; the Montevideo Treaty on International Civil Law of 1940; the Additional Protocol to the Montevideo Treaty on International Civil Law of 1940; and the Buenos Aires Protocol on International Jurisdiction in Contractual Matters. They are also regulated under the domestic private international law rules contained within the Appendix of the Civil Code of Uruguay. The Appendix of the Civil Code, including rules regulating contract, is under revision; a Draft General Act on Private International Law is in Parliament under consideration. It seems unlikely that the Hague Principles will play any role regarding this Draft Act at present; however, the draft has yet to be approved mainly due to disagreement on the role of party autonomy. If the Draft Act is approved and entered into force, the Hague Principles may become useful in Uruguayan law.


Author(s):  
Nishitani Yuko

This chapter discusses Japanese perspectives on the Hague Principles. Japan belongs to the civil law system, although some legal institutions grounded in common law also exist. At the end of the nineteenth century, Japan transplanted Western legal systems. Along with the codification of the Civil Code and other statutes, the Private International Law Act, Hôrei, was adopted in 1898, which was modernized and substituted by the Japanese Act on General Rules for Application of Laws (AGRAL) in 2006. The AGRAL designates, out of several conflicting laws, the law which has the closest connection with the legal relationship concerned. This value-neutral, multilateral method consists in localizing the legal relationship in a certain jurisdiction, grounded on the equality and interchangeability of domestic law and foreign law. While the judge does not have the authority to directly apply the Hague Principles instead of the AGRAL in litigation, the judge can certainly refer to the Hague Principles in seeking guidance for interpretation or filling gaps of the AGRAL, same as for other international, regional, or domestic conflicts rules, including the relevant Hague Conventions.


Author(s):  
Daniel Berkowitz ◽  
Karen B. Clay

Although political and legal institutions are essential to any nation's economic development, the forces that have shaped these institutions are poorly understood. Drawing on rich evidence about the development of the American states from the mid-nineteenth to the late twentieth century, this book documents the mechanisms through which geographical and historical conditions—such as climate, access to water transportation, and early legal systems—impacted political and judicial institutions and economic growth. The book shows how a state's geography and climate influenced whether elites based their wealth in agriculture or trade. States with more occupationally diverse elites in 1860 had greater levels of political competition in their legislature from 1866 to 2000. The book also examines the effects of early legal systems. Because of their colonial history, thirteen states had an operational civil-law legal system prior to statehood. All of these states except Louisiana would later adopt common law. By the late eighteenth century, the two legal systems differed in their balances of power. In civil-law systems, judiciaries were subordinate to legislatures, whereas in common-law systems, the two were more equal. Former civil-law states and common-law states exhibit persistent differences in the structure of their courts, the retention of judges, and judicial budgets. Moreover, changes in court structures, retention procedures, and budgets occur under very different conditions in civil-law and common-law states. This book illustrates how initial geographical and historical conditions can determine the evolution of political and legal institutions and long-run growth.


Global Jurist ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Giulia Terranova

AbstractLegal transplants are considered a significant factor in the evolution of legal systems. One example of transplant of a legal institution through its prestige is the diffusion of the trust from the English legal system to other common law systems and to many civil law countries. One of these is China that in 2001 enacted the Trust Law of the People’s Republic of China. This paper wants to analyse the trust under the Trust Law and to compare it with the original model in the English legal system, understanding how far or how close it is from the original one.


Lex Russica ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 84-103
Author(s):  
O. F. Zasemkova

In May 2018, at the 4th and final meeting of the Special Commission of the Hague Conference on Private International Law, the draft Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Judgments in Civil and Commercial Matters that had been developed since 1992 was represented. It is expected that after the Diplomatic Session that will be held in the mid-2019 the draft will be finalized and the Convention will be adopted and opened for signature.In this regard, the article attempts to analyze the main provisions of the draft Convention and assess the appropriateness for the Russian Federation to access it, taking into account the fact that Russia has a limited number of international treaties permitting recognition and enforcement of foreign judgments in Russia and decisions of Russian courts abroad. Based on the results of the analysis, the author concludes that the adoption of this Convention will provide for a simple and effective basis for the recognition and enforcement of foreign judgments eligible for States with different legal, social and economic circumstances. This, in turn, will increase the practical value of court decisions ensuring the most comprehensive protection of the rights and interests of the party in whose favour the decision has been made and, as a consequence, will contribute to the attractiveness of this method of dispute resolution for parties involved in cross-border private law relations.However, the mixed attitudes of the EU and the USA to the Draft Convention raises the question of their accession to the future Convention and may significantly reduce the impact of the adoption of the document under consideration.


Author(s):  
Виктор Момотов ◽  
Viktor Momotov

In Russian legal science there is a wide-spread belief according to which legal precedents are not sources of Russian law, because Russian legal system forms a part of continental legal system. Various researchers believe that judicial practice does not contain legal norms and consequently case law is not a component of Russian legal framework. The present paper contains the theoretical and historical legal research of the place and role of case law in Anglo-American and continental legal systems. It’s shown that for long historical periods legal precedents were recognized as sources of law not only in Great Britain and the USA, but also in major European legal systems, while at the present time differentiation of legal systems with respect to their attitude towards case law is becoming outdated. Furthermore, based on the research of various legal scholars’ traditions (principally of the positivistic and the sociological traditions) this article demonstrates that negative attitude towards case law is largely determined by the formalistic and obsolete understanding of the term ”source of law”, coming from the misinterpretation of positivism. The paper also presents the current development trends of case law as a source of law. In particular the article outlines the proactive interpretations of new statutory provisions issued by the Plenum of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation, the global uniqueness of such interpretations and the influence of scientific–technological progress and public needs on the highest court’s interpretations. The mutual interference of case law and statutory law is shown.


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