General Issues relating to jurisdiction

A Mumbai company sells machinery to a buyer in Dubai. The buyer never pays. Where can the company sue: in Mumbai, where it sits, or in Dubai, where the money and the buyer are? And if it wins in Mumbai, will a Dubai court ever act on that judgment? Before any court can say which country’s law governs a dispute, it has to settle a prior question: is this court the right one to hear it at all? That prior question is jurisdiction, and it is the subject of the whole of this module.

In two minutes

In private international law, jurisdiction asks three separate things: may this court hear the case, should it (given a better forum abroad), and will its judgment be respected in another country.

The rest of this chapter

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