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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 January 2009
Our English system of Private International Law has for some time past lent itself to accusationsof insularity of conception and stagnation of thought. Dicey's famous work on the Conflict of Laws has threatened to develop into a comfortable niche in which our rules of jurisdiction and the choice of law would be able to dwell in cloistered seclusion undisturbed by criticism from within or by the infiltration of new ideas from without. English legal thought has, undeniably, been dominated for over a hundred years by two text-books. Story's Conflict of Laws reigned supreme until the beginning of this century when it was ousted by Dicey's treatise. Westlake's Private International Law, which in some respects is the most notable contribution which English writers have made to the development of Private International Law, never established itself in a like degree. The somewhat abstruse treatment of the subject by Westlake and his insistence on its comparative aspects involved a departure from current legal tradition which was not wellreceived by the English legal public. Foote's Private International Law which at one time was held in great favour by practitioners was avowedly confined to an analysis of the English casesand as such contained within itself the germs of the obsolescence which has overtaken it. In any event, Dicey's Conflict of Laws was elevated by the Bench and the Bar to a pinnacle of authority which has seldom been attained by a text-book, and the rules in which Dicey stated his propositions have acquired a character which is almost sacrosanct.
1 Private International Law, by Cheshire, G. C., D.C.L., M.A. Oxford: at the Clarendon Press. 1935.Google Scholar
2 (1935) 49 Harvard L. R. at p. 169.
3 See Foster, Some Defects in the English Rules of Conflict of Laws (British Year Book of International Law, 1935, p. 84).
4 Westlake, Private International Law, § 212.
5 See, for instance, The Adriatic [1931] P. 241.
6 Law Quarterly Review, Vol. 57 at p. 539.
7 S. 4 (1) (iv). See also the Convention with Belgium (1934), Cd. 4168, Article 3 (e) and the draft Convention with Germany (Report of the Foreign Judgments Committee, 1932, Cd. 4213), Article 3 (c) (ii).
8 E.g. Rapport de la Commission de la Législation Civile et Criminelle de la Chambre des Dépués Chargée d'examiner le projet de loi portant approbation de la Convention pour l'exécution des jugements entre la France et la Grande-Bretagne (No. 5212 Quinzième Législature, Session de 1935).