Conflict of law 1921–1971 the way ahead

Abstract

(1) Legal BasisWhen the first issue of the Cambridge Law Journal appeared in 1921, the English rules of the conflict of laws were those stated and reformulated by Dicey and by the editors of Westlake and Foote. Their progress between 1858 and 1912 had been charted by Dicey himself in a survey published in 1912. The legal basis for the application of foreign law in England was and remained Lord Mansfield's pronouncement in Holman v. Johnson: “Every action here must be tried by the law of England, but the law of England says that in a variety of circumstances … the law of the country where the cause of action arose shall govern.” Dicey never waivered in his adherence to this rule of English law, but he supplemented it with an argument drawn from the doctrine of acquired rights which bedevilled English lawyers for a long time, until in 1949 the editors of the sixth edition of Dicey took what they believed to be a bold, but substantially honest, step by restricting the concept to its proper boundaries and thus by depriving it of its capacity to serve as a general principle of the Conflict of Laws.