The Crucial Role of the States and Private International Law Treaties: A Model for Accommodating Globalization
8 Pages Posted: 18 Jan 2009 Last revised: 24 Jan 2009
Date Written: January 12, 2009
Abstract
This brief symposium contribution highlights the central and important role that state governments play in the development and integration of private international law treaties into the United States legal system. States play this central role even though, as some of the papers in this symposium have concluded, there are few, if any, constitutional constraints on the ability of the federal government to sign, ratify, and implement treaties that would displace state law. The primacy of states in the integration of private international law, this essay argues, points the way to a model of accommodation of other kinds of treaties affecting traditional areas of state control. The model of state government control over the integration of private international law offers a healthy, if modest, alternative to the sometimes reflexive nationalism pervading scholarship in this area.
Keywords: treaties, federalism, private international law
JEL Classification: K10, K33
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation