RECOGNITION AND ENFORCEMENT OF FOREIGN JUDGMENTS ANALYSIS AND PROPOSED FEDERAL STATUTE V.

About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline

COUNCIL MEMORANDUM NO. 2 1 (circa 2000)

handle is hein.ali/alirej0004 and id is 1 raw text is: AMERICAN LAW INSTITUTE

Project on International Jurisdiction and the Recognition and
Enforcement of Foreign Judgments
Council Memorandum No. 2
From: The Reporters
Tntrndultition
The purpose of this Report is to inform the Council about tne
status of the proposed Hague Convention on Jurisdiction and
Foreign Judgments in Civil and Commercial Matters, and the
Institute's related project to implement the Convention in the
United States and/or to draft a federal statute in the absence of
treaty to govern the recognition and enforcement of foreign
judgments in the United States.
In Council Memorandum No. 1 presented to the Council in
December, 1999, we set forth the outlines of the proposed
Jurisdiction and Judgments Convention, which was to be finalized
at a Diplomatic Conference at the Hague, scheduled for October,
2000. We noted various areas of controversy with respect to the
jurisdiction provisions of the proposed Convention and the
possibility that the United States would resist a Convention of
that design. The Council and the Reporters then considered how
the ALI should proceed given that a finalized Draft Convention
might well be unacceptable to the United States. The ALI project
has always had two components -- one to draft federal legislation
to implement the Convention and the other to provide a federal
statute on recognition in the event the Convention is not adopted.
The Council's recommendation was that for the time being, the
Reporters proceed on both fronts. Within that framework, the
Reporters submitted a Report to the members of the Institute at
the May, 2000 meeting in Washington, D.C., which raised a number
of issues for discussion with respect to both aspects of the
Project.
In early May 2000. shortly before the Annual Meeting of the
Institute, a decision was taken at the General Affairs Meeting of
the Hague Conference that a Diplomatic Session in October 2000
would be premature, in light of the serious divisions among the
delegates about an appropriate Convention text.' The Special
Commission on General Affairs and Policy of the Hague Conference
recommended that the Diplomatic Session be postponed and divided
into two sessions: the first to be held in June 2001, the second in
I See Linda Silberman, Can the Hague Judgments Project Be
Saved?: A Perspective from the United States [forthcoming).