Definition, meaning and scope of private international law

A Mumbai engineer marries a woman in Dubai, buys a flat in Navi Mumbai, signs a job contract with a Singapore firm and dies in London. Whose law decides whether the marriage is valid, who inherits the flat, and which court hears a dispute over the contract? Nothing in the Contract Act or the Succession Act answers that on its own. Private international law is the branch of law built to answer it: when a private dispute touches more than one country, which court may hear it, which country's law applies, and when will a foreign judgment be respected?

In two minutes

Private international law (conflict of laws) is the body of rules a court uses to decide three things in a dispute with a foreign element: whether it has jurisdiction, which system's law governs, and whether a foreign judgment or award will be recognised and enforced.

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