Primary Characterization — defining the legal nature of the cause of action

You give your cousin in Dubai a cheque for a bike, he never delivers, and you want your money back. Is that a claim in contract, because of the promise, or in restitution, because he kept money he should not? The answer decides which court and which law apply. Before any conflict rule can be used, the court must first decide what kind of dispute it is looking at. That first labelling step is primary characterization, and getting it wrong sends the whole case down the wrong road.

In two minutes

Primary characterization (classification) is the first stage of the conflict analysis: the court identifies the legal category of the cause of action, such as contract, tort, property, succession, marriage or procedure, so it can pick the matching choice-of-law rule.

The rest of this chapter

The full explanation, the cheat sheet, every previous-year question at every mark weight, the quiz and the answer skeletons are part of Conflict of Laws on LexBlox Semester. Sign in to unlock the subject, or read Module 1 of Legal Language and Writing free.