During the last fifty years, we have witnessed a flurry of codification activity in private international law (PIL) or conflicts law, resulting in the adoption of nearly 200 national codifications and international conventions-more than in all preceding years in the seven-century history of PIL. After a brief overview of this unprecedented development, the speaker will compare and evaluate the ways in which these codifications:
- Resolve tort and contract conflicts;
- Respond to some of the fundamental philosophical dilemmas of PIL, such as whether the choice-of-law process should aim for “conflicts justice” or “material justice”;
- Struggle to attain the optimum equilibrium between the perpetually-competing needs for legal certainty on the one hand and flexibility on the other; and
- Succumb to ethnocentric protectionist urges, despite lofty internationalist rhetoric.
The Speaker: Symeon Symeonides is the Alex L. Parks Distinguished Professor of Law and Dean Emeritus at Willamette University School of Law in Oregon. He is an award-winning author and renowned expert in conflicts law, having published 26 books and more than 120 articles (in seven languages) on the subject, including the popular annual survey of American choice-of-law cases for the last 29 years. His work has received six scholarly prizes and has been cited by the supreme courts of the United States, the United Kingdom, and Israel. He has drafted three choice-of-law codifications (for Louisiana, Puerto Rico, and Oregon), participated in drafting several European Union laws and two international conventions, and provided legislative advice to several foreign governments.
This event is organized by the Private International Law Interest Group.