Jueptner on A Hague Convention on Jurisdiction and Judgments
Eva Jueptner (University of Dundee) has kindly shared a presentation of her book titled A Hague Convention on Jurisdiction and Judgments: Why did the Judgments Project (1992–2001) Fail? published by Intersentia in 2024.
A Hague Convention on Jurisdiction and Judgments – Why did the Judgments Project (1992 -2001) Fail? provides the first comprehensive analysis of the reasons that may have contributed to the failure of the Judgments Project of the Hague Conference on Private International Law. The Judgments Project was abandoned after an unsuccessful Diplomatic Session of the Hague Conference Member States in 2001, after preparatory work on the project which lasted for almost ten years. The project aimed at both securing the recognition and enforcement of foreign judgments in civil and commercial matters and unifying grounds of international direct jurisdiction on a broad scale. If the project had been successful, it would have filled a massive gap in the international legal order, by securing the recognition and enforcement of judgments in civil and commercial matters on a potentially worldwide scale.
As this monograph shows, reasons for the failure are not to be found in the subject matter (the unification of grounds of international direct jurisdiction). Rather, the analysis of the pre-negotiation process of the project from the perspective of project management suggests that its discontinuation is directly linked to the management of the pre-negotiation phase by the secretariat of the Hague Conference. By comparing the preparatory work done for the Hague Judgments Project with the work done on two other successful Hague Conventions, the 1980 Hague Convention on International Child Abduction, and the 1993 Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption, the book concludes that the preparatory phases of the Hague Judgments Project were not managed with the same rigour as the preparatory phases for the other two conventions. Through the case study of the Hague Judgments Project, this monograph also shows the direct connection between the management of the pre-negotiation phase of a multilateral convention and the successful adoption of a convention text at a diplomatic conference.