Private international law for a better world

In March 2021, the Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law hosted the third meeting of the conference of young German-speaking PIL scholars. The day’s topic was sure to provoke a lively response: “PIL for a better world: Vision – Reality – Aberration?” was a pointed reference to the social relevance of PIL and its power to make social change.

The conference for young lawyers in PIL is animated by a desire to have a dedicated forum and to enable transnational dialogue and exchange among those at different universities. The newly published proceedings of the conference document a discourse of often conflicting expectations of a discipline that is supposed to remain neutral on one hand but that many wished were an avenue for achieving political and social goals on the other. The topics addressed in the papers include general considerations about what social policy aims signify for private international law as well as analyses of concrete examples of such significance in context.

Konrad Duden, a senior research fellow at the Institute, led the editorial team with former research associate Christine Toman and senior research fellow Denise Wiedemann, who heads the Institute’s Centre of Expertise on Latin America. Ralf Michaels, director at the Institute, and Ben Köhler, a senior research fellow at the Institute, are among the contributing authors.
 

Image: © Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law / Ana Karolina Wolf