(1) Does it make sense to peg ownership of movable property at the time and place of its conveyance? If the Luries had traveled to Russia to purchase the sketch, would their respective interests in the sketch be determined by Russian law? Assuming the soundness of a situs rule focused . . . Read more

Conflict of Laws in the Federal System To this point, our discussion has implicitly assumed, by and large, that conflict of laws involves only problems of relations between the states that are resolved in state courts. This chapter considers how conflicts analysis might change when a conflicts issue arises in . . . Read more

(1) Why did the Robinsons pursue the question of jurisdiction over the dealership and the regional distributor all the way to the Supreme Court when they knew that the court had jurisdiction over the manufacturer and the international distribution by the latter’s acquiescence? Why wouldn’t a judgment against them have . . . Read more

Conflict of Laws: An Overview Conflict of Laws is a course about the allocation of sovereign authority. In most substantive law courses, discussions assume that a legal rule promulgated by “the State” binds its subjects. This course lifts that assumption to consider governing laws in a world where multiple states . . . Read more

Modern Approaches to Choice of Law A.   Introduction        1.   The “Choice-of-Law Revolution”: Critical Foundations In a remarkable series of essays beginning in the 1920s and eventually collected in book form in The Logical and Legal Bases of the Conflict of Laws, Professor Walter Wheeler Cook undertook an examination of the foundations of . . . Read more

The Jurisdiction of Courts over Persons and Property The right of a particular court to adjudicate a claim involves a number of different legal issues. There must be a state (or federal) long-arm statute authorizing the court to assert jurisdiction over the parties; the defendant must receive adequate notice and . . . Read more

(1) In footnote 10 of Hughes, the Court mentioned that the case did not involve the typical choice-of-law problem in which the forum sought to supplant the law of the alternative state by applying its own law instead. What kind of problem is this, then? Note that the claim was . . . Read more

Traditional Approaches to Choice of Law The cases and rules in this chapter represent the traditional approaches to choice of law that prevailed in the United States in the nineteenth century and first half of the twentieth century. Since then, new theories (discussed in Chapter 3) have emerged, and relatively . . . Read more

(1) Not surprisingly, the most controversial part of Professor Leflar’s approach is the “better rule” component. It is not 100 percent clear that Professor Leflar advocated a better-rule approach instead of simply stating that courts do in fact tend to choose what they consider to be the better rule. Professor . . . Read more

Constitutional Limitations on Choice of Law The due process and equal protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment: [N]or shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.… [U.S. Const. . . . Read more