World Litigation Law and Practice

This review states that the two volumes, “World Litigation law and Practice” and Unit B ”Europe” are an up-to-date publication and thus a welcomed event. It goes on to explain how the two studies attempt to provide not only details as to the civil procedure of the country concerned, but also information concerning the general institutional background in which civil litigation takes place. After the review explains how the volumes should facilitate broad-based comparative procedural research, it offers a few suggestions for its continuance. WORLD LITIGATION LAW AND PRACTICE, UNIT B, EUROPE: VOL. 1, ENGLAND AND WALES, BY LAURENCE J. COHEN; VOL. 2, ITALY, BY MAURO RUBINO-SAMMARTANO AND GIROLAMO ABBATESCIANNI. Ronald E. Myrick, Ed. New York, N.Y.: Matthew Bender, 1986. Looseleaf. $230.00. 3 volumes. Unit A, Canada; Unit B, England and Wales, Italy. Lib. Cong. No. 85-70305. Reviewed by Peter E. Herzog * Professor Leflar once referred to choice of law as a "well watered plateau."' Though some might object to his characterization of choice of law as a plateau,2 few would disagree about the rivers of printers' ink that have inundated it. But much of the resulting academic writing has concerned itself with general conflict of laws theory; procedural problems have received rather less attention. The reason may well be, as a German author recently (approximately) put it, that in the procedural area the clown, "conflicts methodology," may engage in his funny tricks in the foreground, but the real problems lie much more in depth.' That severe practical problems exist in that area for individuals engaged in international litigation was forcefully pointed out more than thirty years ago.4 In some ways, the problems have since become worse and have led to a fair amount of friction between the United States and a number of its allies and trading partners, who resent the supposedly excessively aggressive assertion of American procedural principles in international litigation pending in the United States, while American courts dislike the restraints put on their fact-gathering processes by foreign courts. 5 That con* Crandall Melvin Professor of Law, Syracuse University; Professeur Associ6, Universit6 de Bourgogne (Dijon), Spring Term 1987. 1. Leflar, Choice of Law: A Well-Watered Plateau, 41 LAw & CONTEMP. PROBS.,