The 2019 Judgments Convention: The Need for Comprehensive Federal Implementing Legislation and a Look Back at the ALI Proposed Federal Statue

Abstract

In this short piece, which will eventually be published in a tribute volume to Professor George Bermann, Professor Silberman presents an argument for comprehensive federal legislation to implement the 2019 Hague Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Judgments. To that end, she provides a brief overview of the Convention and offers suggestions for the components of a federal implementing statute. Professor Silberman refers back to the 2005 ALI project (for which she was a co-Reporter) that had proposed a federal statute on judgment recognition, even in the absence of an international Convention. She highlights a number of specific issues on recognition and enforcement that are worthy of federal attention. Professor Silberman points out that the interest of the United States in this Convention is to ensure that U.S. judgments will be enforceable in other countries that were previously hostile to foreign recognition generally and to U.S. judgments in particular. She believes that federal legislation is necessary to establish a uniform regime of recognition and enforcement that will incentivize other countries to join the Convention rather than allowing them to continue to take advantage of liberal recognition/enforcement under state law without necessarily requiring reciprocal treatment.