PRIVATE INTERNATIONAL LAW

Abstract

This chapter discusses the concept of private international law. In some major languages, the name of the field of law called private international law suggests a close proximity with public international law. While the latter is the legal regime governing relationships between States, the former was conceived as regulating transborder relationships between individuals. The term private international law has not quite the same meaning everywhere. There is universal agreement only about its core. Some countries, especially the anglophone and Central European countries, regard conflict of laws (conflit de lois) as the proper and almost exclusive province of private international law; to this is frequently added the law of international procedure as covering the procedural aspects of transborder relationships between individuals, although conflict rules are rare in this area. The Socialist countries use functions rather than method as a criterion and consider private international law as extending to conventions creating uniform substantive law, especially in the fields of transportation, sales, and negotiable instruments. The Romanic countries, while excluding uniform law from the definition of private international law, add two other areas, namely the law of nationality, as an important connecting factor of conflict rules and the law of aliens.