A Logical Model of Private International Law1 IntroductionA Logical Model of Private International Law1 Introduction.docVIP

A Logical Model of Private International Law 1 Introduction: Jurisdiction and Choice of Laws In our increasingly interconnected world, multiple normative systems have to betaken into account by lawyers and judges, especially in international contracts and other commercial and social interactions involving different countries. First of all, there are different national legal systems. Secondly, there are various transnational or international laws: rules produced by various international organizations (the United Nations, the Word Trade Organization, the European Community, and so on), various forms of transnational customary or soft law (Internet law, lex meratoria, and so forth). Thirdly, there are various sub-national laws: laws of autonomous member States, regions, municipalities, tribal or ethnic communities, etc. We do not need to enter the discussion on legal pluralism and examine whether we may properly speak of laws (legal systems) with regard touch diverse normative institutions and sources of norms (see for instance [17]).What matters for us is that when different normative systems overlap, interact, and sometimes compete, lawyers must be able to understand their interactions, namely, the ways in which each system takes into account the existence, the content and implications of other systems. This is the subject of the the discipline called private international law (or conflicts of laws), which uses two fundamental mechanisms, jurisdiction and choice of law to coordinate the working of distinct legal systems, each having its own norms and adjudicative authorities choice of law concerns establishing what legal rules should be applied by such authorities in deciding the case. The approach of private international law enables the coexistence of multiple normative systems, having distinct and often contradictory rules, and the decision of cases involving persons connected to different legal systems, without imposing an additional overarching regulation, an