Cross-Border Issues in Australasian Courts

Keynote speaker:  Professor Jürgen Basedow (Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law, Hamburg) with Dr Maria Hook (University of Otago) & Dr Bevan Marten (Victoria University of Wellington)

Sponsored by the New Zealand Law Foundation, University of Otago Humanities Research Grant.

This invite-only workshop will encompass aspects of both private and public international law, but with a focus on the impact of cross-border issues within the domestic courts. Cross-border issues are an under-explored aspect of law in Australasia. Despite the central place of cross-border trade to the New Zealand and Australian economies, the countries have rarely engaged with the questions of how their courts should deal with the cross-border disputes that inevitably arise. How prepared are the Australasian legal systems for the increasing volume of trade governed by foreign legal systems, or disputes involving foreign parties? What can be done to make courts and litigants more comfortable with the treatment of public international law in domestic litigation? Where developments have occurred, for example the relatively recent legislation on trans-Tasman disputes, deeper analysis is required.