Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Judgments: A New Approach for the Hague Conference?

Abstract

Since this article was originally written and presented in the spring of 1992, considerable progress has been made in the effort achieve an international convention regulating jurisdiction and recognition of foreign judgments. In May 1993, the Seventeenth Session of the Hague Conference on Private International Law decided to include in the agenda for work of the Conference the question of the recognition and enforcement of foreign judgments in civil and commercial matters and requested the Conference's Secretary General convene a Special Commission study[] further the problems involved in drafting a new convention, make[] proposals with respect work which might be undertaken, and suggest[] the timing of such work. 1 The Special Commission met in the Hague on June 20-24, 1994, begin this preliminary work on a convention. Our hope is that the Conference's Eighteenth Session in 1996 will make a convention on jurisdiction and recognition an agenda item for an extraordinary session of the Conference in 1997 or 1998. The article was revised in May 1994 take into account these and other developments since the spring of 1992. Its intention remains the same, however: discuss the genesis of what is now the Hague jurisdiction and recognition project, consider the merits and demerits of various approaches jurisdiction and recognition problems, and explain why, in the United States's view, the most promising institutional basis for achieving a satisfactory convention was the Hague Conference on Private International Law.