Introduction - Chapter 1 - EU-PIL: European Union Private International Law in Contract and Tort

Joseph Lookofsky is the Professor of Obligations and Private International Law at the University of Copenhagen. He is a native of New York, USA, where he began his professional career as in-house legal counsel for United Artists Corporation. He went to Denmark in 1973, studied Danish law, and joined the University Law Faculty in 1981. Professor Lookofsky has taught at Duke University Law School and has been a Visiting Scholar at New York University School of Law.

Ketilbjørn Hertz is Legal Advisor with the Ministry of Justice, Denmark. He received degrees from the University of Copenhagen, cand.jur. in 1993 and Ph.D. in law in 1998. In 2007 he completed the Cycle international court at the Ecole nationale d' administration in Strasbourg, France.

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Originally from EU-PIL: European Union Private International Law in Contract and Tort

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1.1. General Introduction
Private law + international element
The field of law which lawyers in Europe refer to as ‘private international law’ (PIL) comprises a collection of specialised sets of rules designed to help resolve private law disputes which involve an international (foreign) element.

Private law
When lawyers in Europe refer to ‘private law’ they often have in mind the kind of substantive law which governs the rights and obligations of and between private parties, including the rules covered by such law school subjects as Obligations, Contracts and Torts. If, for example, merchant A claims that merchant B has not performed a given contractual obligation to provide certain goods or services, substantive rules of contract law will de-termine whether B has breached his or her promise to A and whether A is entitled to a remedy: e.g. monetary compensation (damages). Or if, to take a different private law example, A claims that B’s product caused harm to A’s person or prop-erty, substantive rules of product liability will determine whether B has committed a tort (breached a non-contractual obligation) and, if so, whether A is entitled to damages.

International element
But what happens when private law disputes like these involve an international (foreign) element? Suppose, for example, that the two merchants concerned (A and B) have their places of business in different countries (States X and Y). Or suppose that A (in State X) claims damages for an injury caused by a product manufactured by B (in State Y).