Conflict of Laws.

Conflict of Laws. On the breaking up of the Roman empire into separate kingdoms, as many systems of jurisprudence, more or less dissimilar, arose, and were administered side by side. But owing to commercial intercourse and intermarriage many persons held property in more countries than one; many possessed two nationalities by birth, and more than two—if nationality could be acquired by residence and interest in a foreign state. In such circumstances it often became an object of the utmost importance to individuals to ascertain, and of the greatest difficulty to lawyers to determine, whether the laws of one state or of another were to govern questions of sale, succession, status, and the like. As no state could vindicate its jurisdiction beyond its own boundaries without being guilty of an act of aggression, it became absolutely indispensable that certain general rules should be fixed upon in order to prevent the danger of national hostilities on trifling occasions. The elaboration of these rules constituted a new branch of jurisprudence, to which the title of Private International Law has been given. Many of the classical treatises on the subject—e.g. Huber and Story—are entitled the Conflict of Laws. Other writers, such as Savigny, Bar, and Foelix, use the term ‘Private International Law.’ From the partially independent character which belongs to the different states which constitute the American Union, the labours of the continental jurists in international jurisprudence have been carefully adapted to the requirements of that country; and it is consequently to America and to continental Europe, rather than to British writers, that we must look for systematic works on this subject. See INTERNATIONAL LAW.