New Directions in Private International Law

Abstract

The term «private international law» lacks a universally agreed definition. This is hardly surprising, since it is often given different meanings in different legal cultures or systems. In the North American common law tradition, for example, it is gener-ally if narrowly equated with conflicts of laws—that is, the specialized principles and rules of national law used by domestic courts to determine which of several competing laws applies to disputes involving people in different countries or of dif-ferent nationalities or to transactions which cross international boundaries. In such situations, for example, courts can choose to apply the law of the forum, the law of the individual’s nationality, or the law of the site of the transaction or occurrence. Most U.S. practitioners and judges think of «private international law» as referring to these choices of law rules.