ABSTRACT
This paper explores the character of Private International Law, or the Conflict of Laws, during the Cold War. It does this mainly by looking at one specific site where legal scholars and practitioners from the different blocs and non-aligned parts of the world, continued to come together to discuss their field: the yearly summer courses at the Hague Academy of International Law. The paper looks at the striking efforts made by lecturers at The Hague to keep a conversation going, in technical terms and among experts; and at how these efforts related to their conception of their discipline. Starting from these exchanges, but also taking in broader institutional and practical innovations of the era, the paper formulates a double-sided view of Private International Law during the Cold War. The period was in many ways foundational for the field as it exists and operates today. But tying contemporary disciplinary trends and innovations to any specific Cold-War related exigencies is not so easy. ‘Cold-War’ Private International Law, in the end, is probably best seen, in deceptively simple terms, as ‘Modern’ Private International Law. That observation itself, finally, is revealing for the longer term, secular, character of the field.
Bomhoff, Jacco, Cold-War Private International Law (June 17, 2024), LSE Legal Studies Working Paper No 16.
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