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Theory paper

Conflict of Laws

Examined on Private international law — no single governing enactment, Rome Convention 1980 on the law applicable to contractual obligations, Code of Civil Procedure 1908, Heads the Indian material reaches only in part. India has no codified conflict of laws. The subject is built from the common law rules as the Indian courts have applied them, from the conflicts provisions scattered through Indian statutes — CPC s. 13 and s. 44A on foreign judgments, the Special Marriage Act, the Indian Succession Act — and from the international instruments below. That absence is itself examinable: say which rule you are applying and where it comes from.

This page is the map of the paper: every syllabus unit, the leading cases with full summaries, and the exam questions the paper actually sets.

Units

  1. Unit 1 · Introduction and Stages of Analysis in Private International Law — Module I — the nature and scope of private international law, its relation to public international law and to municipal law, and the stages of analysis: characterisation, the incidental question, renvoi, and the exclusion of foreign law
  2. Unit 2 · Jurisdiction and the Enforcement of Foreign Judgments — Module II — the bases on which a court takes jurisdiction in a case with a foreign element, forum non conveniens and anti-suit injunctions, and the recognition and enforcement of foreign judgments
  3. Unit 3 · Applicable Law — Family Matters — Module III — domicile and its kinds; marriage, its formal and essential validity, and polygamy; matrimonial causes and the recognition of foreign divorces; legitimacy and legitimation; adoption and guardianship; and the work of the Hague Conference
  4. Unit 4 · Applicable Law — Contracts and Commercial Matters — Module IV — the proper law of the contract and the party autonomy rule; the Rome Convention 1980 (the disk carries no Rome I Regulation); exchange contracts; torts; and the transfer of property, movable and immovable

Exam questions

Where it sits

Statutes