Choice of law
- Also called:
- private international law
- Key People:
- Joseph Story
- John Westlake
- Related Topics:
- international law
- exequatur
In its choice of the applicable law, the court that exercises jurisdiction determines which law to apply to a case that involves foreign parties, foreign transactions, or a number of foreign elements. In a simple world, the court would always apply its own law, the law of the forum (known in Latin as the lex fori). Indeed, some modern methodologies, particularly in the United States, favour the lex fori approach.
Historical development
Classic theories of conflicts law were territorially oriented. The German jurist and legal scholar Friedrich Karl von Savigny (1779–1861) sought to identify the law where, “according to its nature,” the legal problem or relationship had its “seat.” Anglo-American law also sought the territorially applicable law because, in the view of the American legal scholar Joseph Beale (1861–1943), whose thoughts shaped much of American conflict-of-laws theory in the first half of the 20th century, that is where the rights and obligations of the parties “vested.” This vested-rights doctrine maintained that, once a right was created in one locale, its existence should be recognized everywhere. Classic theories of conflicts law used a number of connecting factors to determine the territorially applicable law. In matters of family law, Anglo-American law used the parties’ domicile (narrowly defined). In civil-law countries, by contrast, a person’s nationality was until recently the most important connecting factor. Because of the influence of the Hague Conference on Private International Law, however, the reference is now more commonly to the law of a person’s “habitual residence” (as it is in the law of jurisdiction).
For torts, American law traditionally looked to the law of the place of injury, whereas European law referred either to it or to the law of the place where the wrongful conduct had occurred. Some European systems referred to the law of either of these places; this was, and continues to be, the plaintiff-favouring choice-of-law rule in Germany. For contracts, most legal systems looked to the place of performance for breach but stipulated that the place of formation was a more important connecting factor for questions of validity. These examples illustrate that rather well-defined connecting factors can identify the applicable law in a predictable manner, subject to exceptions in certain difficult cases.
Despite, or perhaps because of, their predictable results, these rules at times failed to serve the interests of justice: they were inflexible, and they did not prevent important aspects of a particular case from being overlooked. Such problems could have occurred in cases involving the fortuitous commission abroad of a tort involving parties with a common domicile in the forum or in another state (where the long-term effects of the tort would be felt) or the conclusion of a contract in an unrelated state (for example, at a trade fair) between two or more parties, all of whom conducted business in a common (but different) state. In both examples, the common (“home”) law of the parties might serve the parties’ interests—and those of society—better than the mechanical application of traditional tort or contract choice-of-law rules. Consequently, courts and parties resorted to so-called “escape devices” that yielded better, more appropriate results. Among these is the recharacterization of a set of facts—e.g., the recasting of a question of contract as a tort or a tort question as one of family law. For example, what law governs the question of whether spouses have the capacity to sue each other or whether they have immunity? In a personal-injury case, is this a question of tort law (i.e., the law of the place of injury) or family law (law of the state of the marital domicile)? If the two laws differ, the characterization of the issue may produce different outcomes. The escape from rigid rules by means of recharacterization resulted in a period of considerable uncertainty, especially in the United States.
Contemporary developments
New approaches to choice of law, starting with the governmental-interest analysis developed by the American legal scholar Brainerd Currie, began to emerge in the 1950s. Currie’s approach sought to determine whether a “true” or “false” conflict exists between the law of the forum state and that of the other involved state. A false conflict exists if the laws of both states do not differ; if, though ostensibly different, both laws are designed to effectuate the same policy; or if one law is construed to be inapplicable to cases such as the one before the court. If by these guidelines the other state is determined not to have an interest, a false conflict exists, thus making the local law of the forum the applicable choice of law.
In cases of “true conflict”—i.e., in cases in which both the forum’s law and another law claim applicability—Currie called for the application of forum law. He rejected any evaluation or weighing of the competing state interests, considering this to be a legislative, not a judicial, function. Contemporary applications of interest analysis do undertake to weigh the relative interest; an example is California’s “comparative impairment” approach. Overall, governmental-interest analysis has had a significant influence on modern American conflicts law.
Another approach, known as the better-law approach, attempts to determine which of two potentially applicable laws is better as a solution to the problem at hand. Not surprisingly, both the governmental-interest and the better-law approaches tend to apply the lex fori, either because the other law is deemed to be inapplicable (i.e., the other state is disinterested, or there is a so-called “false conflict”) in view of the forum’s determination that it has the greater interest in having its law applied or because forum law, according to the better-law approach, is deemed to be better. American case law employing these approaches has tended to display a “homeward trend”—i.e., one that favours the home forum.
Applications in the United States
The American Law Institute (ALI), a private association of lawyers, judges, and law professors, drafts so-called “restatements” of specific areas of the law. Bearing some resemblance to European codes in their form and structure, the ALI’s restatements synthesize all U.S. state case laws on a particular subject, such as tort, agency, or contracts. As the laws change, the ALI publishes new restatements. Although the material presented in them is not law, many ALI restatements have proved so reliable that courts have been known to cite the restatement instead of case law precedents. This has occurred, for example, with the restatements of contract and of tort law.
The Restatement of the Law, Second: Conflict of Laws (1971–2005) not only updated its predecessor document (which was promulgated in 1934 and reflected a bias toward vested-rights thinking) but took a forward-looking stance by presenting recommended approaches, particularly for tort and contract conflict-of-laws cases. Drawing upon all of the approaches that had been the subject of academic discourse over the preceding quarter century, it called for the applicable law to be the law of the place where the “most significant relationship” between the transaction (in contract) or occurrence (in tort) and the parties is located. Furthermore, the Restatement (Second) provides a number of connecting factors (“contacts”) to determine the place of the most significant relationship, such as the place of the tort, the domicile of the parties, and so forth. These contacts are to be evaluated in light of the “general principles” of section 6 of the Restatement (Second). They include party expectations, societal interests—including the policies underlying particular rules of law—ease in the administration of justice, and fairness, among others. This approach, which some earlier contract cases had called the search for the contract’s “centre of gravity,” has been very influential in the United States.
Nevertheless, several of its features can make its application somewhat uncertain. For example, because the criteria provided by the Restatement (Second) are not ranked in order of priority, different courts may assign different priorities, thereby contributing to different (divergent) results. The Restatement (Second) also provides expressly that the choice-of-law determination be made for each issue of the case; as a result, different laws may apply to different issues of a case (a situation known as dépeçage [French: “break into smaller pieces”]). This “splitting” of a case into its various component issues may promote just solutions for difficult international cases, but the practice significantly increases the burden on courts and on the involved parties. In addition, it diminishes the decision’s value as a precedent for later cases, even if they differ only slightly. Finally, the general principles of the Restatement’s section 6 accommodate all doctrinal schools—from interest analysis to the better-law approach—thus giving courts substantial leeway. Predictability thus depends on the development of a consistent body of case law, yet its orientation may differ from state to state.
Applications in EU member countries
European choice-of-law methodology has undergone similar changes, both in the law of individual European states and within the EU—in the latter first as a result of the Rome Convention and more recently as the result of EU legislation. In tort the EU’s Rome II Regulation contains specific rules for a few torts but in general calls for the application of the law of the place of injury, with exceptions in favour of the law of the parties’ common habitual residence and, as an alternative, of a more closely connected law. In contract the Rome I Regulation also provides specific choice-of-law rules for a number of contract types—for example, seller’s law for contracts for the sale of goods in the absence of a contrary party stipulation. In so doing, it translates the preceding Rome Convention’s reference to the law of the party rendering the “characteristic performance” (e.g., selling the goods, providing the service) into concrete rules. The Rome Convention’s underlying policy—application of the most closely connected law—becomes the default rule when no specific rule applies. The Rome I Regulation also provides special rules for consumer, insurance, and employment contracts.
Applications in other countries
In many countries around the world, including many that are civil-law oriented, recent legislation similarly has made the determination of the applicable law more flexible. Many codifications, such as in eastern Europe outside the EU, or legislative projects, such as in China, no longer make reference to a single governing law in tort but also give weight to such alternatives as the parties’ common domicile and other relevant factors.
Other considerations
Differences between the conflicts law of different countries may raise additional choice-of-law questions, such as those pertaining to the renvoi (French: “send back”) principle. If the foreign law, to which the forum’s conflicts rule refers, contains a conflicts rule that refers back to the law of the forum, will the latter accept the reference and apply its own law? Similarly, if the foreign law contains a conflicts rule that refers to the law of a third country, will the forum follow that reference? The underlying question hinges on whether the forum’s reference to foreign law includes that law’s conflicts rules in the first place. Many legal systems answer the question in the affirmative and thereby resolve the two questions posed in the foregoing. But not all conflicts systems utilize renvoi (most American courts do not), and even those legal systems that do use it or have used it in the past exclude renvoi. This is now the case in EU conflicts law with respect to tort and contract cases.
On procedural issues, a court will always apply its own law. There is no agreement, however, on which issues are procedural and which are substantive. Time limitations (statutes of limitations), for example, are considered substantive in civil-law countries but procedural in certain other countries and in many states of the United States.
Recognition and enforcement of judgments
Judgments are sovereign acts that have no force beyond the jurisdiction of the court that renders them. Thus, if assets for satisfying a judgment in favour of a creditor are unavailable locally, recognition and enforcement of the judgment will need to be sought in a state in which the debtor does hold assets. Within the United States, recognition and enforcement of sister-state judgments are mandated by the full faith and credit clause of the federal Constitution and are facilitated procedurally in many states by uniform state laws. For EU member-states the Brussels Convention on Jurisdiction and the Enforcement of Judgments in Civil and Commercial Matters (1968) and its successor, the Council Regulation on Jurisdiction and the Recognition and Enforcement of Judgments in Civil and Commercial Matters (2000; Brussels I), perform a similar function by mandating the automatic recognition and enforcement of EU member-state civil and commercial judgments in all other member states, subject only to few exceptions. Another EU regulation, the Council Regulation concerning Jurisdiction and the Recognition and Enforcement of Judgments in Matrimonial Matters and the Matters of Parental Responsibility (2003; the Brussels II Regulation), does much the same for divorce and custody decrees.
Internationally, the recognition of a judgment is a matter of national law, although it is sometimes dealt with in bilateral or multilateral treaties (except in the United States, which is not party to any judgments-recognition treaty). National legal systems will ordinarily recognize a judgment rendered in a foreign country (sometimes on the condition of reciprocity), provided that the rendering court had jurisdiction (as measured by the standards of the recognizing court), that the judgment debtor had received notice sufficient to enable him to defend, and that the foreign judgment does not offend the public policy of the recognizing state. Most systems do not allow a review of the foreign judgment on the merits (a so-called révision au fond [French: “review of the background”]). However, when a court rejects a foreign judgment on the basis of public policy, it will necessarily have considered substantive or procedural aspects of foreign law and, because of its disapproval of them, refuse to accept the outcome of the case. A German court, for example, will refuse to recognize an American punitive damage judgment because, according to the German view, punitive damages exceed the purview of tort law, which seeks compensation but not punishment. Similarly, an American court may refuse to recognize an English judgment for damages because English substantive and procedural law (e.g., the burden of proof in defamation) violates U.S. constitutional-law principles.
In composite jurisdictional systems such as those of the United States and the EU, where a central norm establishes jurisdictional limits for the constituent units, alleged jurisdictional defects must be raised directly (on appeal within the particular constituent unit’s system) when both parties are before the court. They cannot be raised collaterally—i.e., as a defense against recognition of the judgment in another constituent unit. The effect of the first court’s judgment (and of issues necessarily bound up with it) on the immediate parties, when not appealed or when affirmed on appeal, becomes res judicata (Latin: “the matter is adjudicated” or “a thing adjudged”) and is not open for reexamination in a second forum (nor in the original forum after a period fixed by the statute of limitations has expired). The scope of a judgment’s res judicata effect (the recognition of a judgment as a bar to the initiation of a new suit all over again) is ordinarily that which attaches under the law of the rendering state. Exceptions may apply when the judgment is rendered by default (i.e., the defendant is not before the rendering court), when certain effects are unknown in the law of the recognizing country, or perhaps also when a judgment goes beyond the res judicata effect that the latter’s law would accord.
