Private Law Theory

INTRODUCTION
For nearly a hundred years, efforts to unify, harmonize or coordinate private law consisted of the drafting of a diplomatic convention that would enter into force once a specified number of countries had acceded to its terms. Conventions might look to regulate private interaction within a specified (substantive) issue area, or only specific (procedural) interactions involving resolution of disputes arising between private parties. The choice between public and private international law, and between a focus on substance and procedure, were the limited formal strategies employed in the making of international private laws in the early twentieth century. Since the late 1960s, international law-making organizations, especially the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (‘UNCITRAL’), have drawn from a widening range of formal strategies that include choosing among model laws, legislative guides, statements of principles, recommendations or rules, as well as the drafting of purely explanatory text …

Susan Block-Lieb and Terence C Halliday, Less is More in International Private Law (January 1, 2015), (2015) 3 Nottingham Insolvency and Business Law e-Journal 4.