Private International Law

Is a convenient expression for such_ rules as, in the jurisprudence of most civilized nations, are applied, e« comitate, to the solution law, bindipg propria vigore upon any independent state, can be established by generalization from the jurisprudence of other nations. 10 App. Cas. 513. See "Conflict of Laws;" "International Law."

A name used by some writers to indicate that branch of the law which is now more commonly called Conflict of Laws. Mr. Dicey (Conflict of Laws, Moore’s Ed. 12) points out that the defect of “Conflict of Laws” is that the supposed conflict is fictitious and never really takes place; that the expression has the further radical defect of concealing from view the circumstance that the question by the law of what country a given transaction shall be governed is often too plain to admit of doubt. If, he says, the term applies to the conflict in the mind of a judge as to which of two systems of law should govern a given case, this amounts simply to saying that the term “conflict of laws” may be used as an inaccurate equivalent for the less objectionable phrase “choice of laws.” He considers the expression “private international law” as “handy and manageable,” but that it is at bottom inaccurate, and has led to endless misconception of the true nature of this department of legal science. It confounds two classes of rules which are generically different from each other. The principles of international law are truly “international,” because they prevail between or among nations; but they are not in the proper sense of the term “laws,” for they are not commands proceeding from any sovereign; on the other hand, the principles of private international law are “laws” in the strictest sense of that term, for they are commands proceeding from the sovereign of a given state; but they are not “international,” for these individuals may, or may not, belong to the same nation. The expression “interna-, tional private law” is, no doubt, a slight improvement on “private international law” as it points out that the rules which the name denotes belong to the domain of private law. But the name has the insuperable fault of giving to the adjective international a meaning different from the sense in which it is generally and correctly employed. Other suggested names are “comity,” the “local limits of law,” “intermunicipal law,” but these have not become current. Holland (Jurisprudence 370) first employed the term “extra-territorial recognition of rights,” but Mr. Dicey points out that this is a description, and not a name. Hannis Taylor (Jurisprudeiice 611), after considering the opinion of many writers, American, English and Continental, as to the use of this name, reaches the conclusion that its use is subject to many objections and expresses his regret for having adopted it (following Kent) in his International Public Law. Holland, Jurisprudence 410, considers the term “wholly indefensible.” Gray, Nature, etc., of the Law 124, approves this view and points out that Dicey has returned to the title “Conflict of Laws.” Sir F. Pollock (First Book of Jurispr. 99) speaks of this department of the law as “now commonly” the “conflict of laws,” but he prefers the German term

— Internationale Privat-recht. See International Law; Conflict of Laws.