Adrian Briggs, PRIVATE INTERNATIONAL LAW IN ENGLISH COURTS Oxford: Oxford University Press (www.oup.com), 2014. lxxii+1064 pp. ISBN 9780198713739. £195.
| Date | 01 September 2015 |
| DOI | 10.3366/elr.2015.0313 |
| Pages | 438-440 |
| Published date | 01 September 2015 |
| Author |
Considered intellectually this book is a consequence of and response to existential issues that have faced UK legal systems, and the legal subject sometimes known as “the conflict of laws” in England, since the UK joined what is now called the European Union. The issues developed from the implementation and codification of aspects of EU private international law during the 1970s but became particularly acute following the revisions to and rapid expansion of this law since 2001. European private international law replaces entire sections of the domestic private international law of each of the legal systems of the EU member states whenever an EU Regulation concerning private international law applies in time, and also to the subject matter of the litigation at issue. Every legal system within the EU has thus had to come to terms with the replacement and marginalisation of its domestic private international law rules by European Regulations containing pan-European private international law that only the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) may definitively interpret. Though the case law makes plain that many EU legal systems have occasionally found
For UK legal systems, in particular the legal system of England & Wales, matters are different. As the English legal system has no equivalent code of private international law, and as the constituents of “the conflict of laws” are found in its civil procedure rules and – from the perspective of the parties – the quasi-discretionary operation of those rules by the judiciary as mediated by domestic case law and isolated pieces of domestic legislation, the integration of the European Regulations within the UK legal systems has not been as simple as “unplugging” one part of a domestic code and then “plugging-in” a pan-European “upgrade”. For the English legal system these compatibility problems were further complicated because, at various points, they coincided with periods of intense development on the commercial side of its domestic conflict of laws rules. This coincidence led to conflicts between the domestic rules and the provisions of European private international law. The resolution of these conflicts by the CJEU, according to the...
To continue reading
Request your trial