The Conflict of Laws: A Comparative Study. Volume Two. Foreign Corporations: Torts: Contracts in General

Full application of comparative methods to the law of conflicts requires a working plan of some magnitude. We ought to take stock of the conflicts rules existing in the different countries of the world, state their similarities or dissimilarities, and investigate their purposes and effects. The solutions thus ascertained should moreover be subjected to an estimation of their usefulness, by the standards appropriate to their natural objective. Conflicts rules have to place private life and business relations upon the legal background suitable to satisfactory intercourse among states and nations. They are valuable to the extent that their practical functioning, rather than their legal appearance, serves this purpose. To meet the challenge of this program with limited forces is a risky undertaking. Nevertheless it has to be attempted. The conditions of the law of conflicts are deplorable. It may be said, to the reader\u27s and my own consolation, that the staggering provincialism apparent in the international family law presented in this volume is not equaled in other parts. But if conflicts problems have been cultivated by men of the highest erudition, idealism, and endeavor, they have also been the object of prejudice and dogmatism. Suggestions of almost all needed ideas may be found, but little agreement on a sound choice. The courts of this country dealing with a wealth of interstate cases have prevailingly shown sincere respect for foreign legislation and applied an accomplished method of comparative research. But this admirable attitude, which is the most outstanding model for the practice of private international law, suffers exceptions, and in the field of international relations throughout the world, despite enormous efforts, the simple truth that harmony presupposes mutual understanding and tolerance, has not prevailed in conflicts law more than in foreign affairs.https://repository.law.umich.edu/michigan_legal_studies/1007/thumbnail.jp

The Conflict of Laws: A Comparative Study. Volume One. Introduction: Family Law

Full application of comparative methods to the law of conflicts requires a working plan of some magnitude. We ought to take stock of the conflicts rules existing in the different countries of the world, state their similarities or dissimilarities, and investigate their purposes and effects. The solutions thus ascertained should moreover be subjected to an estimation of their usefulness, by the standards appropriate to their natural objective. Conflicts rules have to place private life and business relations upon the legal background suitable to satisfactory intercourse among states and nations. They are valuable to the extent that their practical functioning, rather than their legal appearance, serves this purpose. To meet the challenge of this program with limited forces is a risky undertaking. Nevertheless it has to be attempted. The conditions of the law of conflicts are deplorable. It may be said, to the reader\u27s and my own consolation, that the staggering provincialism apparent in the international family law presented in this volume is not equaled in other parts. But if conflicts problems have been cultivated by men of the highest erudition, idealism, and endeavor, they have also been the object of prejudice and dogmatism. Suggestions of almost all needed ideas may be found, but little agreement on a sound choice. The courts of this country dealing with a wealth of interstate cases have prevailingly shown sincere respect for foreign legislation and applied an accomplished method of comparative research. But this admirable attitude, which is the most outstanding model for the practice of private international law, suffers exceptions, and in the field of international relations throughout the world, despite enormous efforts, the simple truth that harmony presupposes mutual understanding and tolerance, has not prevailed in conflicts law more than in foreign affairs.https://repository.law.umich.edu/michigan_legal_studies/1006/thumbnail.jp

The Conflict of Laws: A Comparative Study. Volume One. Introduction: Family Law

Full application of comparative methods to the law of conflicts requires a working plan of some magnitude. We ought to take stock of the conflicts rules existing in the different countries of the world, state their similarities or dissimilarities, and investigate their purposes and effects. The solutions thus ascertained should moreover be subjected to an estimation of their usefulness, by the standards appropriate to their natural objective. Conflicts rules have to place private life and business relations upon the legal background suitable to satisfactory intercourse among states and nations. They are valuable to the extent that their practical functioning, rather than their legal appearance, serves this purpose. To meet the challenge of this program with limited forces is a risky undertaking. Nevertheless it has to be attempted. The conditions of the law of conflicts are deplorable. It may be said, to the reader\u27s and my own consolation, that the staggering provincialism apparent in the international family law presented in this volume is not equaled in other parts. But if conflicts problems have been cultivated by men of the highest erudition, idealism, and endeavor, they have also been the object of prejudice and dogmatism. Suggestions of almost all needed ideas may be found, but little agreement on a sound choice. The courts of this country dealing with a wealth of interstate cases have prevailingly shown sincere respect for foreign legislation and applied an accomplished method of comparative research. But this admirable attitude, which is the most outstanding model for the practice of private international law, suffers exceptions, and in the field of international relations throughout the world, despite enormous efforts, the simple truth that harmony presupposes mutual understanding and tolerance, has not prevailed in conflicts law more than in foreign affairs.https://repository.law.umich.edu/michigan_legal_studies/1006/thumbnail.jp

AN INTERIM ACCOUNT ON COMPARATIVE CONFLICTS LAW

Under the sponsorship of the American Law Institute and subsequently of the University of Michigan, with the efficient assistance of the Faculty, notably of Hessel E. Yntema as editor, I published the first volume of a work on conflicts law in 1945. A second volume has just followed, after a long delay caused by the vicissitudes of postwar printing. The greater part of a third volume has been readied in the meantime, but its date of publication is not yet fixed. The task consists in surveying the existing and proposed conflicts rules of the world and in ascertaining their background, purposes, and social effects as exactly as the available sources permit. We should be able by such research to devote the manifold advantages of comparative studies to the urgent needs of a branch of law which at present bears the name of private international law as if by irony, like lucus a non lucendo

The Conflict of Laws: A Comparative Study. Volume Three. Special Obligations: Modification and Discharge of Obligations

Among the multitude of conflicts principles that, according to various claims, should determine the law applicable to all contracts, only two have resisted the test of critical analysis. These, indeed, form an adequate groundwork. First, the freedom of parties to choose the law applicable to their contract must be recognized as a general rule without petty restraint. Second, in the absence of such agreement, a contract should be governed by the law most closely connected with its characteristic feature. The first proposition is essential to the second. To deny party autonomy means rigid conflicts rules created by some superior authority. A scholastic doctrine may invest the law of the place of contracting with ineluctable force; a state may forbid stipulations for a foreign law. However, our modest task requires but a reasonable choice of law advisable for average use by courts and legislatures. This cannot aspire to ascertain more than subsidiary rules. It is not possible to achieve anything practical by attempting to coerce the parties into an inexorable law of our creation. This conception is perfectly consistent with a considered regard to the large significance of public law at the present time. It even allows and facilitates a line of thought leading to the subsidiary application of the private law of that state which, by its administrative law, preponderantly regulates certain kinds of business. This will appear in such contracts as maritime carriage of goods, employment, and msurance.https://repository.law.umich.edu/michigan_legal_studies/1008/thumbnail.jp

The Conflict of Laws: A Comparative Study. Volume Four Property: Bills and Notes: Inheritance: Trusts: Application of Foreign Law: lntertemporal Relations

With this fourth and final volume, the monumental survey of existing systems of conflicts law, initiated by the late Ernst Rabel in 1939 under the auspices of the American Law Institute but conducted after 1942 through the generous sponsorship of the University of Michigan Law School, is completed. It is most fortunate that, despite the fact that the present volume was prepared in various institutions during the years immediately preceding the author\u27s death on September 7, 1955, he not only finished but also revised the proofs of the text; the various tables were later compiled at Ann Arbor.https://repository.law.umich.edu/michigan_legal_studies/1009/thumbnail.jp

The Conflict of Laws: A Comparative Study, Second Edition. Volume Three. Special Obligations: Modification and Discharge of Obligations

The third volume of Ernst Rabel\u27s comparative treatise on the conflict of laws was originally published in 1950. With the continued support ofThe University of Michigan Law School and the cooperation of the Max-Planck-Institut für auslaändisches und internationals Privatrecht in Hamburg, this second edition of Volume III has been prepared. Plans for the revision of Volumes I and II were made before the death of the author on September 7, 1955, and the work was carried to completion by Dr. Ulrich Drobnig of the staff of the Institut in Hamburg. We were fortunate in obtaining the services of another well-qualified member of the staff of that Institut, Dr. Herbert Bernstein, who spent the academic year 1962-1963 as research associate at The University of Michigan Law School. As in previous revisions of this work, this volume has very few changes in the text, as distinguished from the footnotes. Citations and illustrations have been brought up to date to the end of 1962.https://repository.law.umich.edu/michigan_legal_studies/1012/thumbnail.jp

The Conflict of Laws: A Comparative Study. Volume Three. Special Obligations: Modification and Discharge of Obligations

Among the multitude of conflicts principles that, according to various claims, should determine the law applicable to all contracts, only two have resisted the test of critical analysis. These, indeed, form an adequate groundwork. First, the freedom of parties to choose the law applicable to their contract must be recognized as a general rule without petty restraint. Second, in the absence of such agreement, a contract should be governed by the law most closely connected with its characteristic feature. The first proposition is essential to the second. To deny party autonomy means rigid conflicts rules created by some superior authority. A scholastic doctrine may invest the law of the place of contracting with ineluctable force; a state may forbid stipulations for a foreign law. However, our modest task requires but a reasonable choice of law advisable for average use by courts and legislatures. This cannot aspire to ascertain more than subsidiary rules. It is not possible to achieve anything practical by attempting to coerce the parties into an inexorable law of our creation. This conception is perfectly consistent with a considered regard to the large significance of public law at the present time. It even allows and facilitates a line of thought leading to the subsidiary application of the private law of that state which, by its administrative law, preponderantly regulates certain kinds of business. This will appear in such contracts as maritime carriage of goods, employment, and msurance.https://repository.law.umich.edu/michigan_legal_studies/1008/thumbnail.jp