Say the ratio out loud before you open Reasoning — recalling it unprompted is exactly what the exam pays for.
Why it matters
It supplies the justification for the rule in Huber v. Steiner. Students can state that procedure belongs to the lex fori; what earns the extra mark is being able to say why that is fair to a litigant whose rights were created by another system.
Facts
This course states the case for its principle and does not set out its facts. Do not supply any.
Held
A person who chooses a forum for enforcing his rights must accept the procedure which that forum lays down.
Reasoning
Step one — identify the complaint being answered. A plaintiff whose right arises under a foreign law may find that the forum's procedural rules — on limitation, on evidence, on the form of the action — make that right harder to enforce or unenforceable. He says the forum has defeated the governing law.
Step two — locate the element of choice. He selected this court. Nothing compelled him to sue here rather than in the country whose law created his right.
Step three — hence the answer. Having taken the benefit of the forum, he takes its machinery with it. The rule is not an imposition but the price of a choice.
Exam use
It opens: any question that asks you to justify, rather than merely state, the lex fori rule for procedure. Pair it with the practical reason — that the forum's own process is the one that will work most smoothly.
Use it to frame the critique as well. The fairness argument holds only so long as the forum's characterisation of procedure is honest. Where the forum widens procedure to recapture its own substantive law, as in Leroux v. Brown, the plaintiff has not chosen the forum's procedure but has had the forum's substantive law imposed on him under another name. Stating the justification and then showing where it breaks down is the shape of a good answer on this head.
It does not decide what falls on either side of the line; for that, the forum characterises.