The Future of International Judicial Assistance

This post first appeared on Ted Folkman’s Letters Blogatory, which is celebrating its 10th anniversary – if you don’t know that blog yet, do check it out, it  is rightly called The Blog of International Judicial Assistance. Ted, who has been a guest on this blog, asked me to contribute some thoughts about the future of international judicial assistance (IJA). Ted’s invitation came at a time when I experience, for the first time, a step backwards in that field: The Brexit Deal between the European Union and the United Kingdom, which in my view is a “sectoral hard Brexit” for civil judicial assistance. Continue reading

ABA Journal’s Top 100 Blawgs: Call for Nominations

1213_Blawg100250There are (still) quite a few things in the United States I envy. Certainly, one of these is the thriving legal blogosphere – they have so many legal blogs over there, they even created a neologism for them: blawgs. Every year since 2007, the American Bar Association’s ABA Journal has assembled a list of their 100 favorite blawgs for the December issue.

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US Ratification of Hague Choice of Court Convention: Bad News from Across the Pond

HCCH PictureWe have regularly covered the Hague Convention of Choice of Court Agreements on this blog. From a German, and indeed from a European perspective, a major breakthrough in terms of practical relevance of the Convention would be the ratification of the convention by the United States, given that there currently is no treaty in place between Germany and its biggest non-European trading partner that deals with recognition of judgments. Ted Folkman on his blog lettersblogatory.com is probably the best source for coverage of the Convention’s road towards ratification in the United States. This is what Ted has to Report: Continue reading

Federal Constitutional Court on International Judicial Co-Operation – A US Perspective

US_Supreme_Court_-_correctedOver at Letters Blogatory, Ted Folkman has picked up the decision of the Federal Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht) on judicial assistance on which I reported earlier this week. Ted found a nice name for the case, In re Frau R.*, and shared an interesting observation from a US perspective: Continue reading