Professor Trevor Hartley

This course is available on the LLM (extended part-time), LLM (full-time) and University of Pennsylvania Law School LLM Visiting Students. This course is available with permission as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit.

This course has a limited number of places and demand is typically high. This may mean that you’re not able to get a place on this course.

Students should preferably have taken LL4AL International Business Transactions: Commercial Litigation or obtained equivalent knowledge elsewhere. Knowledge of conflict of laws (private international law) would be useful but is not essential. Non-LLM students must have a full law degree (a degree which fulfils the degree requirement for becoming a lawyer in your country).

A good general understanding of commercial law is essential.

Litigation resulting from international business transactions. The following topics will be studied from the point of view of European Union law, English law and US law: choice-of-court agreements; forum non conveniens and lis pendens; antisuit injunctions; freezing orders; arbitration and the Brussels Regulation; obtaining evidence abroad; recognition and enforcement of foreign judgments.

This course will have two hours of teaching content each week in the Lent Term and two hours in the Summer Term. There will be a Reading Week in Week 6 of Lent Term.

All students are expected to produce one 2,000 word formative essay during the course.

Core textbook: Trevor C Hartley, International Commercial Litigation (Cambridge University Press, 3rd edn, 2020) (specified chapters only). For reference: Trevor C Hartley, Civil Jurisdiction and Judgments in Europe (Oxford University Press, 2017). Further reading: Born (Gary B) and Rutledge (Peter B), International Civil Litigation in United States Courts: Commentary and Materials (Wolters Kluwer, Austin, Boston, Chicago, New York, the Netherlands, 6th edn, 2018); Fentiman (Richard), International Commercial Litigation (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2nd edn. 2015); Hartley, “Jurisdiction in Conflict of Laws – Disclosure, Third-Party Debt and Freezing Orders” (2010) 126 LQR 194

Exam (100%, duration: 2 hours, reading time: 15 minutes) in the summer exam period.