LAU44112 Conflicts of Law

Learning Outcomes

By the end of this module, students should be able to:

• Locate contentious issues within national and international legal contexts;
• Identify and evaluate the role of EU law in the development of rules and standards applied in the Irish courts;
• Identify and critically analyse rules governing jurisdiction, choice of law and the recognition and enforcement of judgments both orally and in writing;
• Compare and contrast the application of those rules in different substantive legal contexts;
• Discuss and debate different theoretical and practical perspectives on the conflict of laws and formulate proposals for reform;
• Apply Irish and European conflicts regimes in practical settings to resolve hypothetical fact scenarios;

• Conduct effective research of contentious issues at national and international levels.

Module Content

Conflict of Laws (also known as Private International Law) is the body of rules whose purpose is to assist the Irish court in deciding a case containing a foreign element. It consists of three main elements: (1) the jurisdiction of the Irish court (whether the Irish courts is competent to hear the dispute); (2) the selection of the appropriate rules of a system of law, Irish or foreign, which it is to apply in deciding a case before it (choice of law); and (3) the recognition and enforcement of judgments given by foreign courts. A particular focus of the course is the development of distinctive conflict of law rules within the European Union in the areas of tort, contract and commercial litigation