REMINDER: Lecture Announcement — Tuesday, Wade Auditorium, March 24th at Noon — All Welcome — Lunch Provided
REMINDER: DON’T MISS THIS CHANCE TO SEE ONE OF THE WORLD’S LEADING PRIVATE INTERNATIONAL LAW SCHOLARS
and get
A FREE LUNCH!
__________________________
Lecture Announcement
Wade Auditorium, March 24th at Noon.
Codifying Choice of Law around the World: The Last Fifty Years
Symeon C. Symeonides, Alex L. Parks Distinguished Chair in Law and Dean Emeritus, Willamette University School of Law
The Lecture
During the last fifty years, we have witnessed a flurry of codification activity in Private International Law (PIL), resulting in the adoption of nearly 200 national codifications and international conventions―more than in all preceding years in the seven-century history of PIL.
Drawing from the lecturer’s recent comprehensive book on this subject, the lecture will compare and evaluate the ways in which these codifications:
- resolve certain conflicts of laws―namely, how they choose the law that governs disputes that implicate the laws of more than one country;
- respond to some of the fundamental philosophical dilemmas of PIL, such as whether the choice-of-law process should aim for the law that will produce the “best” substantive outcome, rather than for the country that has the “proper” connections regardless of outcome;
- struggle to attain the optimum equilibrium between the perpetually competing needs for legal certainty, on the one hand, and flexibility, on the other hand; and
- succumb to ethnocentric protectionist urges, despite contrary internationalist rhetoric.
The Lecturer
Symeon C. Symeonides is the holder of the Alex L. Parks Distinguished Chair in Law and Dean Emeritus at Willamette University School of Law, in Oregon. He has published 25 books and more than 100 articles (in seven languages) on conflict of laws and comparative private international law (PIL), including the widely-read annual surveys of American choice-of-law cases for the last 28 years. Reviewers have characterized him as a “conflicts giant” and “perhaps the world’s leading expert on comparative conflicts law today.” His work has been cited by the supreme courts of the United States and the United Kingdom and has been honored with four scholarly prizes, including one for lifetime achievement from the American Society of Comparative Law.
Symeonides has taught at several American and European universities, including Paris-I, Paris-V, Louvain-la-Neuve, and the Hague Academy of International Law. An active law-reformer, he drafted three PIL codifications (for Louisiana, Puerto Rico, and Oregon), and provided legislative advice to the EU Parliament, the EU Council, and several national governments. He recently spent six months in Brussels chairing five drafting groups of the EU Council.
He is president of the International Association of Legal Science, former president of the American Society of Comparative Law, and member of the Institut de Droit International, the International Academy of Comparative Law, the Groupe Européen de Droit international Privé, the American Law Institute, the Order of the Coif, and Phi Beta Kappa. He holds two LL.B. degrees (in private law and public law) from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece, an LL.M. and an S.J.D from Harvard, and two honorary doctorates.
