Journal du droit international: Issue 1 of 2026

The first issue of the Journal du droit international for 2026 has been released. It contains one article and several case notes relating to private international law issues.

In her contribution, Estelle Fohrer-Dedeurwaerder (University of Toulouse Capitole) discusses the international element of legal situations (La manipulation de l’internationalité des situations juridiques).

The English abstract reads:

The international character of a legal situation proves difficult to delineate owing to the variability of the criteria that may be taken into account. Consequently, both the parties and the judge, or even the legislator may be inclined to construct a form of “convenient” internationality – either to enable the situation to elude the mandatory rules of the forum, or, conversely, to deny its international dimension so as to bring it under the authority of the forum’s legal order.

Internationality is therefore far from a neutral notion; it serves the strategic aims of each actor: those of the judge, who may seek to avoid the application of foreign law; those of the legislator, intent on integrating exogenous situations and unifying applicable regimes without distinguishing between international and domestic situations; and those of the parties, who may be pursuing more liberal legal solutions.Manipulating internationality allows legal situations to be treated indistinctly and subjected to a single regime, thereby simplifying the legal framework or enhancing legal certainty. By assimilating situations marked by a foreign element to purely internal ones, it also prevents differentiated treatment. However, when internationality is instrumentalized – whether through the denial of the foreign element or through its artificial creation by the parties – the outcome becomes more questionable, as it reveals a preference for the jurisdiction or the law of the forum, if not a form of fraud intended to circumvent the mandatory rules of the forum.

The table of contents of the issue can be accessed here.