Text CB4A1
When parties to a private law dispute are based in
different countries, or the facts and issues giving rise to the
dispute cross national borders, questions of private international
law arise. In which country’s courts should the parties litigate
their dispute? Which country’s law should be applied to resolve
it? How can the judgment be enforced in another country?
Private international law is the body of domestic law that
supplies the rules used to determine these questions.
Problems of private international law are by no means a
recent phenomenon. The conditions that give rise to problems of
private international law date from at least the fourth century BC.
The problems are, however, becoming more difficult and
increasingly pervasive because modern technologies challenge
the territorial premise on which the existing rules of private
international law have been developed.
In this respect, the advent of the Internet in the late 1980s
has been a catalyst of socio-economic change that has posed
significant challenges for private international law. More recent
innovations, such as crypto-tokens and distributed ledgers, add
novel and arguably intractable problems to these existing
challenges.
The British Law Commission has a project that
particularly focuses on crypto-tokens, electronic bills of lading,
and electronic bills of exchange. This is because these assets are
prevalent in market practice, whilst also posing novel theoretical
challenges to the methods by which issues of private
international law have traditionally been resolved.
Internet: <lawcom.gov.uk> (adapted).