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This is a shameless plug for my new book. It is available for pre-order on the Oxford University Press website and on Amazon.com. I was fortunate enough to co-author this work with my friend and colleague Luke Sobota from Three Crowns.

This book is intended to be a modern update of Bin Cheng’s seminal book on general principles from 1953–identifying, summarizing and analyzing the core general principles of law and norms of international due process, with a particular focus on developments since Cheng’s writing. The aim is to collect and distill these principles and norms in a single volume as a practical resource for international law jurists, advocates, and scholars. The book includes a Foreward by Judge Stephen M. Schwebel.

We’ve been fortunate to receive some wonderful praise thus far. Judge Schwebel has called it “a signal contribution to the progressive development of international law, . . . [done] with scholarship, insight, and panache.” Pierre Marie Dupuy has deemed it a “most useful study on the place and role of general principles of law in contemporary international arbitration,” while Judge James Crawford expects it to become a “work that will benefit both scholars and practitioners.”

The Permanent Bureau of the Hague Conference on Private International Law seeks a temporary legal assistant to work in the areas of international family law and child protection. The vacancy is advertised here. 

Il Permanent Bureau della Conferenza dell’Aja di diritto internazionale privato intende assumere un collaboratore giuridico a tempo determinato che lavori nel settore della famiglia e della protezione dei minori. Maggiori dettagli a questo indirizzo.

Constance Castres Saint-Martin, Les conflits d’intérêts en arbitrage commercial international, L’Harmattan, 2016, ISBN: 9782343101965, pp. 454, EUR 45.

Le conflit d’intérêts est un sujet passionnant notamment en raison de son omniprésence dans l’actualité. Cette expression s’est récemment diffusée en France dans le monde des affaires et au sein du jargon médiatique. Néanmoins, il n’existe en l’état actuel du droit positif français aucune réglementation spécifique de ces conflits d’intérêts. L’auteur s’interroge donc sur la définition et la valeur opératoire de cette notion et le régime juridique qui pourrait lui être réservé.

The EUPILLAR Database, one of the outputs of the EUPILLAR Project funded by the European Union within the scope of the European Commission Civil Justice Programme (JUST/2013/JCIV/AG/4635) and led by the Centre for Private International Law at the University of Aberdeen, is now live. The Database contains summaries in English of over 2300 judgments that were rendered between 1 March 2002 and 31 December 2015 concerning the Brussels I (Brussels I Recast), Brussels IIa, Maintenance, Rome I and Rome II Regulations and the Hague Maintenance Protocol in the Court of Justice of the European Union and in Belgium, Germany, England and Wales, Italy, Poland, Scotland and Spain.

The EUPILLAR Database, established and maintained by the University of Aberdeen, is available at https://w3.abdn.ac.uk/clsm/eupillar/#/home.

Le premier procès de l’affaire des « biens mal acquis », qui s’est ouvert lundi à Paris, a été reporté mercredi au mois de juin.

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Par un arrêt de grande chambre du 29 novembre 2016, la Cour européenne des droits de l’homme a rappelé et précisé les conditions procédurales permettant à un accusé de comprendre sa condamnation, en l’absence de motivation du verdict rendu par un jury populaire.

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Majeur protégé - Mandat de protection future - Curatelle

Succession

Autorité parentale - Mineur - Assistance éducative

Le mariage contracté en pays étranger entre un français et un étranger est valable s’il a été célébré selon les formes usitées dans le pays de célébration. Sa transcription, qui n’est soumise à aucune exigence de délai, rend la qualité de conjoint opposable aux tiers depuis la date du mariage.

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L’article 49 du Traité sur le fonctionnement de l’Union européenne ne s’applique pas à un litige concernant un syndicat, dont les membres sont des médecins exerçant en France, et une société qui a son siège social, exerce son activité et réalise les actes litigieux également sur le territoire national.

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La Commission européenne a autorisé, le 12 décembre 2016, les mesures françaises de soutien aux énergies renouvelables conformément à ses lignes directrices de 2014 relatives aux aides d’État à la protection de l’environnement et de l’énergie.

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In the flurry of judgments issued by the European Court of Justice on Super Wednesday, 21 December, spare a read for C-618/15 Concurrence /Samsumg /Amazon: Cybercrime, which dealt with jurisdiction for tort under the Brussels I Recast Regulation and the location of locus damni in the event of online sales. The foreign suffix of the website was deemed irrelevant.

To fully appreciate the facts of the case and the Court’s reasoning, undoubtedly it would be best to read Wathelet AG’s Opinion alongside the Court’s judgment.

Concurrence is active in the retail of consumer electronics, trading through a shop located in Paris (France) and on its online sales website ‘concurrence.fr’. It concluded with Samsung a selective distribution agreement (covering France) for high-end Samsung products, namely the ELITE range. That agreement included, in particular, a provision prohibiting the sale of the products in question on the internet. Exact parties to the dispute are Concurrence SARL, established in France, Samsung SAS, also established in France, and Amazon Services Europe Sàrl, established in Luxembourg. Amazon offered the product range on a variety of its websites,  Amazon.fr, Amazon.de, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.es and Amazon.it.

Concurrence sue variously for a lift of the ban on internet sales (claiming the ban was illegal) and alternatively, an end to the  offering for sale of the elite products via Amazon. The French courts suggest they lack jurisdiction over the foreign Amazon websites (excluding amazon.fr) because the latter are not directed at the French public. Concurrence suggest there is such jurisdiction, for the products offered for sale on those foreign sites are dispatched not only within the website’s country of origin but also in other European countries, in particular France, in which case jurisdiction, they suggest,  legitimately lies with the French courts.

Pinckney figures repeatedly in Opinion and Judgment alike. Amazon submit that the accessibility theory for jurisdiction should not be accepted, since it encourages forum shopping, which, given the specific nature of national legal systems, might lead to ‘law shopping’ by contamination. Amazon seek support in Jaaskinen’s Opinion in Pinckney. Wathelet AG first of all notes (at 67 of his Opinion) that this argument of his colleague was not accepted by the CJEU. Moreover, he finds it exaggerated: the national court can award damages only for loss occasioned in the territory of the Member State in which it occurs: this limitation serves as an important break on plaintiffs simply suing in a State per the locus damni criterion ‘just because they can’.

The Court agrees (at 32 ff) but in a more succinct manner (one may need therefore the comfort of the Opinion for context):

• The infringement of the prohibition on resale outside a selective distribution network is given effect by the law of the Member State of the court seised, so that a natural link exists between that jurisdiction and the dispute in the main proceedings, justifying jurisdiction for the latter.  It is on the territory of that Member State that the alleged damage occurs.
• Indeed, in the event of infringement, by means of a website, of the conditions of a selective distribution network, the damage which the distributor may claim is the reduction in the volume of its sales resulting from the sales made in breach of the conditions of the network and the ensuing loss of profits.
• The fact that the websites on which the offer of the products covered by the selective distribution right appears operate in Member States other than that of the court seised is irrelevant, as long as the events which occurred in those Member States resulted in or may result in the alleged damage in the jurisdiction of the court seised, which it is for the national court to ascertain.

With this judgment national courts are slowly given a complete cover of eventualities in the context of jurisdiction and the internet.

Geert.

(Handbook of) European private international law, 2nd ed. 2016, Chapter 2, Heading 2.2.11.2

Premier volet en France de l’affaire des « biens mal acquis », le procès de Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue, fils du président de Guinée Equatoriale, s’est ouvert en son absence lundi à Paris.

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« La Convention de La Haye du 25 octobre 1980 ayant pour seul objet d’assurer le retour immédiat des enfants déplacés illicitement et de faire respecter le droit de garde existant dans l’État du lieu de résidence habituelle de l’enfant, avant son déplacement, le juge de l’État requis doit, pour vérifier le caractère illicite de celui-ci, se borner à rechercher si le parent avait le droit de modifier seul le lieu de résidence de l’enfant pour le fixer dans un autre État ».

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Something to digest quietly, to start this new year: in Gaz de France v STS the French Conseil d’Etat annuled an arbitral award for breach of ordre public. The Conseil objected in particular to the panel’s denial of mandatory French (administrative) law. Reed Smith have analysis here, including of the issue on jurisdiction (Conseil d’Etat or Court de Cassation).

Upon reading the judgment, my question is this (just putting it in the group, as it were): does the Conseil have terminology right where it seems to classify breach of mandatory law as a violation of ordre public (it is the latter only which justifies annulment under the New York Convention)? Incidentally (at 5) it also refers to the possibility of mandatory EU law being part of this interpretation of ordre public. This structure is clearly inspired by the Rome I Regulation where, as I have noted before, the presence of mandatory law, overriding mandatory law, and ordre public, is causing confusion.

Happy New Year, happy reading, Geert.

« Il ne peut être fait exception au retour immédiat de l’enfant que s’il existe un risque de danger grave ou de création d’une situation intolérable ».
« Ces circonstances doivent être appréciées en considération primordiale de l’intérêt supérieur de l’enfant ».

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Dear readers, my apologies for the puzzling title of this post, but I take the opportunity to bring the following three unrelated publications to youR attention before this year ends. HAPPY 2017!

A few months ago the book eAccess to Justice was published (eds. Karim Benyekhlef, Jane Bailey, Jacquelyn Burkell, Fabien Gélinas; University of Ottawa Press 2016), including a few papers on cross-border litigation. More information is available here. The blurb reads:

Part I of this work focuses on the ways in which digitization projects can affect fundamental justice principles. It examines claims that technology will improve justice system efficiency and offers a model for evaluating e-justice systems that incorporates a broader range of justice system values. The emphasis is on the complicated relationship between privacy and transparency in making court records and decisions available online. Part II examines the implementation of technologies in the justice system and the challenges it comes with, focusing on four different technologies: online court information systems, e-filing, videoconferencing, and tablets for presentation and review of evidence by jurors. The authors share a measuring enthusiasm for technological advances in the courts, emphasizing that these technologies should be implemented with care to ensure the best possible outcome for access to a fair and effective justice system. Finally, Part III adopts the standpoints of sociology, political theory and legal theory to explore the complex web of values, norms, and practices that support our systems of justice, the reasons for their well-established resistance to change, and the avenues and prospects of eAccess. The chapters in this section provide a unique and valuable framework for thinking with the required sophistication about legal change.

Csongor István Nagy (University of Szeged) has published The Lesson of a Short-Lived Mutiny: The Rise and Fall of Hungary’s Controversial Arbitration Regime in Cases Involving National Assets (27 The American Review of International Arbitration 2 2016, 239-246), available on SSRN. The blurb reads:

This paper presents and analyzes Hungary’s recent legislative efforts and failure to exclude arbitration in matters involving (Hungarian) national assets, demonstrating the difficulties a country faces if it attempts to defy the prevailing pattern of dispute settlement in international trade. The lesson of the Hungarian saga is that, unsurprisingly, arbitration is not only a ‘take it or leave it’ but even a ‘take it or leave’ rule of the club of international economic relations.

Last October, INT-AR Paper 6, authored by Veerle Van Den Eeckhout (University of Antwerp), was published and is entitled “Toepasselijk arbeidsrecht bij langdurige detachering volgens het wijzigingsvoorstel voor de Detacheringsrichtlijn. Enkele beschouwingen vanuit ipr-perspectief” (in English: “The draft proposal to amend the Posting of Workers Directive assessed from the private international law perspective”). The paper is written in Dutch and is downloadable here and on SSRN.

Geneva Internet Dispute Resolution Policies (GIDRP) is a project of the University of Geneva, which looks into selected legal topics relating to internet disputes and puts forward policy proposals. So far, their expert team has developed the GIDRP 1.0 where one of the topics is particularly relevant for this blog readers (Topic 1: Which national courts shall have jurisdiction in internet-related disputes?). The website is inviting online endorsements and comments. Besides, interested experts are welcome to join the project in the development of the GIDRP 2.0. They may be contacted by e-mail: gidpr@unige.ch.

The relating document is available here.