The Exclusion of Privacy Matters from the Judgments Convention

Abstract

In July 2019, after many years of work and lengthy negotiations, the Members of the Hague Conference on Private International Law concluded the historic 2019 HCCH Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Judgments in Civil or Commercial Matters (the ‘Judgments Convention’). One issue of particular focus in the later phases of the negotiations of the Convention was what, if any, judgments ruling on privacy law matters should be permitted to circulate under the Convention. Having acknowledged that privacy is an evolving, broad and ill-defined area of the law and that there are obvious differences in the development and operation of privacy laws and policies in legal systems globally, the Members of the Diplomatic Session on the Judgments Convention determined to exclude privacy matters from the scope of the Convention under Article 2(1)(l). The purpose of this short article is to describe how and why the Diplomatic Session decided to exclude privacy matters from the Convention and to offer some observations on the intended scope of that exclusion.