Revue Critique de Droit International Privé – Issue 4 of 2023

The fourth issue of the Revue critique de droit international privé for 2023 will be released shortly. It contains two articles, several briefing notes as well as numerous case notes on private international law.

In the first article, El Hadji Samba Ndiaye (Cheikh Anta Diop University, Dakar) examines the growing situations of conflicts of nationality in sub-Saharan Africa in the context of contemporary migration and suggests new solutions to these conflicts (La double nationalité des Africains subsahariens et les conflits de lois en matière de statut personnel).

The principle of precedence of the nationality of the forum has an undeniable foundation in African private international law. Fortunately, however, it does not converge with the dynamics of migration of Africans towards the West and the contemporary diasporic realities. Dual nationality becoming more and more a reality in sub-Saharan Africa, it is urgent to review the treatment it receives in the field of conflicts of laws in matters of personal status when the African courts are the subject of direct referral to the proportion of dual African nationals who obtained a naturalization decree during their stay in the West. Taking advantage of the singularities shared between the conflit mobile and the positive conflict of nationalities, this analysis suggests applying to African dual nationals the law of their secondarily acquired nationality corrected, if possible, by the exception of dual nationality.

This paper will be soon available in English on Dalloz website.

In the second article, Sabine Corneloup (University of Paris-Panthéon-Assas) explores methodological issues and legal policy questions raised by marriages of minors celebrated abroad, from a private international law perspective (L’appréhension des mariages d’enfants célébrés à l’étranger. Droit international privé et droits fondamentaux).

While the fight against child marriages is a widely shared international objective, the choice of the best way to deal with such marriages, when they have been legally celebrated abroad, is a highly complex and controversial issue. On 1 February 2023, the German Federal Constitutional Court declared that article 13, paragraph 3, 1°, of the EGBGB relating to marriages of minors under the age of 16 celebrated abroad was contrary to the freedom to marry guaranteed by the Basic Law of 1949. On the basis of this German decision, this contribution proposes a more general reflection, beyond German constitutional law, on the methodological and legal policy questions that such marriages raise in private international law.

The full table of contents is available here.