The Objectives of Private International Law

Abstract

All those who are interested in private international law will remain indebted to Professor Hessel E. Yntema for his many contributions to the field. One of the most valuable of these is his demonstration of what the study of private international law can contribute to comparative law. As editor-in-chief of The American Journal of Comparative Law, Yntema continually stressed the importance of private international law and endeavored to publish in the Journal a variety of articles pertaining to the field. As it has often been pointed out, the study of conflicts of laws leads in time to an examination of the essential differences in the doctrines in various legal systems. More precisely, application of conflicts rules requires penetration and analysis of the meaning of the foreign laws involved. Yntema's work is valuable evidence of the fruitfulness of this kind of research. But the emphasis of his work was on the international dimensions of conflicts of laws. In this regard he closely followed the developments that occurred outside the United States. He was also interested in the history of conflicts of laws, following it far back into ancient times. His broad intellectual horizons included questions of methodology as well. I wish to dedicate these few pages to one of his most original studies in the latter domain. They are written to honor the memory of this eminent scholar, who was at the same time a man courteous, intelligent, and understanding. The study in question appeared in the Revue Critique de Droit International Prive in 1959, under the title, The Objectives of Private International Law.' Efforts of the nature this work of Yntema's represents are generally not adequately appreciated until they are read over again a few years later, and then they reveal qualities of soundness that have already begun to pass the test of time. To read this article once more in 1967 permits us to review with the author the development of various ideas in our common discipline as they manifested themselves in the United States over the past forty years. This in turn reveals a critical evaluation of these developments by an intellect to which the great questions of legal methodology were completely familiar. In this brief article Yntema took up and organized a number of topics with a view to determining the objectives of private interna-