Conflict of Laws

Catalog description

Conflict of Laws considers what law to apply when two or more states or other jurisdictions have connections to a dispute. Suppose that a court has concluded that it has subject matter and personal jurisdiction, so it can "speak law" or "speak rights" to the parties before it (as the term "jurisdiction" suggests) but faces two or more sovereigns whose law arguably might apply. At its most basic, this course addresses the next question: which sovereign's law should the court speak? The course explores this and related questions in many contexts and the various methods that courts and scholars have proposed and adopted to answer them. We consider contrasting points of view regarding choice of law, jurisdiction, and recognition of foreign judgments, asking which policies best promote fairness and harmony both nationally and internationally and meet the federal constitutional requirements of due process of law and full faith and credit for the judgments of other states. A remarkable aspect of this course is the way it cuts across time and many practice areas, probably first introducing you to some of those areas and inviting you to wrestle both with historical legal questions and cutting-edge, or even future, issues.