When legal worlds collide

This is a valuable, updated version of a scholarly work.

The book is a comprehensive but readable analysis of the English law and courts’ approach to conflicts of law issues that arise where there are English and foreign elements to the subject matter in question. It deals in nine well-constructed chapters with private international law issues relating to civil jurisdiction, enforcement of foreign judgments and rules around applicable laws.

What is significant about this edition is how the author deals with the impact of Brexit on English conflict of laws issues. Professor Briggs has woven his narrative on this event into the fabric of the book’s discourse so that the integrated whole makes sense in context. He shows the legacy of EU law in chapters about the continuing effects of the Rome I and Rome II Regulations on the contractual and non-contractual obligations respectively.

The author also addresses the implications in private international law of the growing importance of cryptocurrencies and other digital assets for the law and commercial life. He discusses this development in Chapter 7 on ‘Property’, as well as elsewhere in the book. One suspects that there will be more on digital assets as well as artificial intelligence in what hopefully will be the next edition.

Looking to the future, Briggs considers obstacles to the UK’s attempts to rejoin the Lugano Convention 2007 on civil jurisdiction and judgments, and the relief brought by other conventions, such as the 2005 Hague Convention on choice of court agreements and the 2019 Hague Convention on foreign judgments, which the UK joined. Again, there may be more about this in this book’s next edition, as practice develops.

This well-indexed and annotated book is an ideal work for those who know a little about conflicts of laws and want to learn more, and those who know a lot already but wish to keep up to date.

It simplifies one’s understanding of a complex subject.

David Glass is a consultant solicitor at Excello Law