Revue Critique de Droit International Privé: Issue 4 of 2025

The fourth issue of the Revue critique de droit international privé for 2025 was just published.

It contains four articles dealing with conflict issues and a number of casenotes.

In the first article, Andrea Bonomi (University of Lausanne) presents the recent reform of the Swiss private international law of successions (Le droit suisse des successions internationales : heurs et malheurs de la récente réforme).

By a statute adopted on 23 December 2023 and entered into force on 1 January 2025, Switzerland has recently reformed its private international law rules in matters of international succession. Inspired by a highly commendable objective of harmonisation, this legislative revision will undoubtedly improve coordination between Swiss law and the European Succession Regulation. This objective is achieved both through a unilateral alignment of certain Swiss rules with those of the European Regulation and through a strengthening of the autonomy of the de cujus. Certain solutions are original and would deserve to be considered by the European legislator in the context of a future revision of the Regulation. However, during its legislative process, the initial draft encountered unforeseen resistance, which led, with regard to forced heirship, to a distinctly Swiss compromise that deprives the reform of part of its effectiveness and coherence.

In the second article, Gilles Cuniberti (University of Luxembourg) offers a critique of the case law of the CJEU restricting the concept of court under EU PIL Regulations (Quelques réflexions sur la notion de juridiction en droit judiciaire européen).

The dejudicialization of private law has led the European lawmaker to extend the benefits of European regulations on private international law to non-judicial authorities by broadly defining the concept of ‘court’ within the meaning of these texts. At the same time, the European Court of Justice has embarked on a process of restricting the same concept by excluding decisions rendered by judicial authorities not exercising judicial functions. This contribution examines the varied definitions adopted by the different regulations and questions the appropriateness of the direction taken by case law within the framework of the Succession Regulation. It concludes by proposing a return to a purely organic criterion for decisions rendered by judicial authorities.

In the third article, Lebanese lawyer Melinda BouAoun offers an analysis of a recent Lebanese case on the legitimation of children born outside of wedlock (La légitimation d’un enfant né hors mariage au Liban : une décision audacieuse marquant l’ouverture du système juridique libanais aux systèmes étrangers)

On March 13, 2025, the First Instance Court of Mount Lebanon, competent in matters of personal status and family law, delivered a remarkable decision by recognizing as legitimate a child born out of wedlock to a Lebanese couple belonging to two different religious communities, Shiite and Druze. This article aims to comment on this bold decision, which stands out at a time when issues of filiation — and personal status matters more broadly — continue, in principle, to fall within the jurisdiction of religious authorities in the Lebanese legal system.

Finally, in the fourth article, Emeric Prevost (various affiliations in Europe and Japan) discusses a Japanese judgment which addressed the issue of the law applicable to proprietary rights over bitcoins (La loi applicable aux droits sur bitcoins. À propos d’une décision japonaise).

The decision of 25 April 2024 of the Tokyo District Court is particularly significant in that it is the first to address, under Japanese private international law, the issue of the law applicable to proprietary rights over bitcoins. While a general principle of proximity appears to be affirmed, the judges also expressly refer to the lex situs rule in order to resolve the conflit mobile situation arising from the transfer of bitcoins from one legal system to another. In addition to implicitly recognising the movable nature of bitcoins, the judgment further emphasises the effective control that holders of the private key associated with a unique public address on the Bitcoin network can exercise over the corresponding crypto- assets. The Tokyo judges thus treat control of the private key both as a connecting factor for locating the disputed bitcoins and as an essential condition for property rights created under a foreign law to produce any effect within the Japanese legal order. Finally, the decision also highlights the difficulties in establishing a causal link between alleged breaches of an intermediary’s due diligence obligations and the violation of property rights over crypto- assets such as bitcoins. The decision therefore offers both valuable insights into the current state of the law and an outlook on possible future developments for the private international law of digital finance and crypto- assets.

The full table of contents can be found here.