Books Developments in PIL Scholarship

Weller on Mutual Trust

Matthias Weller (University of Bonn) has published the special course that he gave at the Hague Academy in Volume 423 of Collected Courses of the Hague Academy of International Law.

The title of the course is “Mutual Trust”: A Suitable Foundation for Private International Law in Regional Integration Communities and Beyond?

Professor Weller reflects on how ‘mutual trust’ has become the central justification of the EU to drive its private international law forward. For this, he explores the theoretical potential of trust perspective on private international law. As a first step of the analysis, the concept of trust is deconstructed based on an interdisciplinary analysis. Then, the results are connected with fundamentals of private international law. The central finding is that private international law builds on the dichotomy of trust and control: how far should foreign judgments, foreign law and other foreign judicial acts be integrated – “trusted” – within the domestic administration of justice? This question must be answered by each and every legislator and each and every court, in particular by those that strive for economic and complementing judicial integration. Recurring tools of trust management can be identified. How do regional integration communities use and finetune these tools for their private international law and what are potential explanations from their history, their economics, and their legal cultures? Four communities, selected from different parts of the world, are presented under this perspective, ordered in a series towards growing intensities of mutual trust: the ASEAN, the CEMAC, the MERCOSUR, and the EU. In his contribution Professor Weller comes to the conclusion that trust is, must, and can be managed and dosed according to the respective conditions and contexts, but no matter where we are: to trust or not to trust – that is the question of private international law, for regional integration communities and beyond.

The volume also includes the course of Meg Kinnear (Vice president of the World Bank Group) on The Growth, Challenges and Future Prospects for Investment Dispute Settlement.

Further details about the volume are available here.

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