A nation's prosperity depends not only on the willingness of its businesses to export goods and services, and of its citizens and residents to travel to take advantage of opportunities overseas, but also on the willingness of the businesses and citizens of other nations to cross the nation's borders to do business. Economic expansion, and parallel increases in tourism and immigration, have brought Australians more frequently into contact with the laws and legal systems of other nations. In particular, in recent years, trade with partners in the Asia-Pacific Region has become increasingly important to the nation's future. At the same time, Australian courts are faced with a growing number of disputes involving foreign facts and parties. In recognition of these developments, and the need to ensure that the applicable rules meet the needs both of transacting parties and society, the Attorney-General's Department launched in 2012 a full review of Australian rules of private international law. This collection examines the state and future of Australian private international law against the background of the Attorney-General's review. The contributors approach the topic from a variety of perspectives (judge, policy maker, practitioner, academic) and with practical and theoretical insights as to operation of private international law rules in Australia and other legal systems. This title is included in Bloomsbury Professional's International Arbitration online service.

An analysis of the relationship between private international law, examined from an international systemic perspective, and public international law.

Contemporary debates about the changing nature of law engage theories of legal pluralism, political economy, social systems, international relations (or regime theory), global constitutionalism, and public international law. Such debates reveal a variety of emerging responses to distributional issues which arise beyond the Western welfare state and new conceptions of private transnational authority. However, private international law tends to stand aloof, claiming process-based neutrality or the apolitical nature of private law technique and refusing to recognize frontiers beyond than those of the nation-state. As a result, the discipline is paradoxically ill-equipped to deal with the most significant cross-border legal difficulties - from immigration to private financial regulation - which might have been expected to fall within its remit. Contributing little to the governance of transnational non-state power, it is largely complicit in its unhampered expansion. This is all the more a paradox given that the new thinking from other fields which seek to fill the void - theories of legal pluralism, peer networks, transnational substantive rules, privatized dispute resolution, and regime collision - have long been part of the daily fare of the conflict of laws. The crucial issue now is whether private international law can, or indeed should, survive as a discipline. This volume lays the foundations for a critical approach to private international law in the global era. While the governance of global issues such as health, climate, and finance clearly implicates the law, and particularly international law, its private law dimension is generally invisible. This book develops the idea that the liberal divide between public and private international law has enabled the unregulated expansion of transnational private power in these various fields. It explores the potential of private international law to reassert a significant governance function in respect of new forms of authority beyond the state. To do so, it must shed a number of assumptions entrenched in the culture of the nation-state, but this will permit the discipline to expand its potential to confront major issues in global governance.

In this, the fourth edition of Private International Law and the Internet, Professor Dan Svantesson provides a detailed and insightful account of what has emerged as the most crucial current issue in private international law; that is, how the Internet affects and is affected by the five fundamental questions: When should a lawsuit be entertained by the courts? Which state’s law should be applied? When should a court that can entertain a lawsuit decline to do so? How wide ‘scope of jurisdiction’ should be afforded to a court with jurisdiction over a dispute? And will a judgment rendered in one country be recognized and enforced in another? Professor Svantesson identifies and investigates twelve characteristics of Internet communication that are relevant to these questions and then proceeds with a detailed discussion of what is required of modern private international law rules. Focus is placed on several issues that have far-reaching practical consequences in the Internet context, including the following: cross-border defamation; cross-border business contracts; cross-border consumer contracts; and cross-border intellectual property issues. A wide survey of private international law solutions encompasses insightful and timely analyses of relevant laws adopted in a variety of jurisdictions, including Australia, England, Hong Kong SAR, the United States, Germany, Sweden, and China, as well as in a range of international instruments. There is also a chapter on advances in geo-identification technologies and their special value for legal practice. The book concludes with two model international conventions, one on cross-border defamation and one on cross-border contracts, as well as a set of practical checklists to guide legal practitioners faced with cross-border matters within the discussed fields. Professor Svantesson’s book brings together a wealth of research findings in the overlapping disciplines of law and technology that will be of particular utility to practitioners and academics working in this complex and rapidly changing field. His thoughtful analysis of the interplay of the developing Internet and private international law will also be of great value, as will the tools he offers with which to anticipate the future. Private International Law and the Internet provides a remarkable stimulus to continue working towards globally acceptable private international law rules for communication via the Internet.

The Academy is a prestigious international institution for the study and teaching of Public and Private International Law and related subjects. The work of the Hague Academy receives the support and recognition of the UN. Its purpose is to encourage a thorough and impartial examination of the problems arising from international relations in the field of law. The courses deal with the theoretical and practical aspects of the subject, including legislation and case law. All courses at the Academy are, in principle, published in the language in which they were delivered in the "Collected Courses of the Hague Academy of International Law .