Pragmatism and Private International Law

Citation

Beaumont P & Yekini A (2022) Pragmatism and Private International Law. In: Beaumont P & Holliday J (eds.) A Guide to Global Private International Law. First ed. Hart Studies in Private International Law, Vol 32. Oxford: Hart Publishing, pp. 17-30. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781509932085

Abstract
Private international law is the branch of law that seeks to resolve conflicts arising from cross-border relationships and the potential application of conflicting normative systems to a given case. Scholars differ on the objectives of private international law and the methods for resolving conflictual problems.[2] This chapter presents a pragmatic theory of private international law for the development of the subject globally, primarily by the Hague Conference on Private International Law (HCCH). It builds on earlier work by Kegel[3] and by Beaumont and McEleavy[4] that outlined the importance of the discipline’s ability to separate conflicts justice from substantive justice (the latter being protected where necessary by exceptions – public policy and overriding mandatory rules – to the normal, objective conflicts justice rules).[5] The pragmatic approach emphasises the empirical study of the effectiveness of a variety of private international law solutions and of the underlying substantive law differences in order to design the best private international law solutions. This chapter makes a new contribution to the theory of pragmatism of private international law. First, it goes back to the work of the founders of pragmatism as an intellectual idea,[6] sets out some pragmatic goals for global private international law, and then develops the pragmatic method for global private international law relying on multilateralism, comparativism and empiricism.

Keywords
Private International Law; theory; pragmatism; HCCH