Issues and Perspectives in Conflict of Laws

This new edition updates the book to 2004 with significant developments in U.S. conflicts law and scholarship. It includes more than a dozen new principal cases that not only enhance the breadth and depth of coverage but also are lively and interesting to teach. Many other new cases receive extended treatment as note cases. Much of the new material reflects the increasing importance in this country's courts of international conflicts. The casebook is accompanied by a teacher's manual.

Like the earlier editions, the Fourth Edition features an innovative organization of the choice-of-law materials. After highlighting the natural advantages of applying forum law, Simson examines choice-of-law policies that, at times, have led courts to reject these natural advantages. Professors who have adopted previous editions of the book have praised this organization for its effectiveness in stimulating debate about both the old and new learning in choice of law. Professors using the book also have expressed enthusiasm about its teachability, and they point to another distinctive feature of the book — its format in introductions and notes — as particularly helpful in this regard. The book does not follow the usual practice of posing in the notes a number of questions tailored to the principal case or cases that come before. Instead, questions of some generality and scope are presented in the introduction to each chapter, and the notes are reserved for summaries of relevant cases, excerpts from conflicts scholarship, and other materials shedding light on the issues raised by the principal cases.