In recent years, with the advancement of globalization and shifts in the global landscape, legal perspectives and discourse from Asia have assumed an increasingly important role in international affairs, with the robust cultural heritage and unique historical imprints of the East Asian legal systems rendering them of significant comparative interest.
Private International Law in East Asia: From Imitation to Innovation and Exportation captures this interest, describing the unique evolution and international influence of East Asian legal systems, presenting fresh and rich perspectives from different experts at the symposium on ‘New Developments in East Asian Law’ organized by the Swiss Institute of Comparative Law. The central thesis of the book is that private international law in East Asia has undergone a complex, non-linear process of imitation, innovation and exportation, imitating the relatively advanced Western legal systems, innovating to adapt to local development needs, and exporting its influence to the rest of the world. The book focuses on several States, including China, Japan and South Korea. These East Asian States all share a strong voice in international discourse and significant regional economic strength, and this, coupled with their cultural background and historical factors means that their domestic legal systems typify East Asian characteristics.
Excluding the introduction in Chapter 1 and the conclusion in Chapter 15, the content of the book is divided into four parts. The first part includes Chapters 2 to 5 and gives readers an overview of the development of the legal regimes in China, Japan and South Korea, noting that the early stages of development appear to imitate Western law broadly. The replication is not total, however, as historical, political and cultural factors have also contributed to shaping the law, as seen with the impact of Confucianism and Taoism on Chinese law.
After creating the structural foundations of private international law partially through ‘imitation’, East Asian States began a period of innovation, developing their private international law to meet their own needs. Having matured in this way, their legal concepts and frameworks have been exported to other States. The second part, namely Chapters 6 to 9, provides an in-depth description of the innovation and development in China, Japan and South Korea.
The third and fourth parts each take a specific area of law and analyse the process of development in detail, demonstrating the three phases. The third part includes Chapter 10 on the development of conflict of laws in Japan in dealing with Choice-of-Court agreements, and Chapter 11 which discusses how Japanese and Korean courts have treated the interpretation of international treaties differently in the context of the 1965 Treaty on Basic Relations between Japan and the Republic of Korea. The fourth part, Chapters 12 to 14, describes the new developments in the field of international family law and succession matters in China, Japan and South Korea.
The book contains ample factual support to convincingly illustrate innovation in private international law by East Asian States. Examples are Japan's enhancements to conflict-of-jurisdiction rules in civil and commercial disputes as well as family matters, and China's progressive additions to conflict-of-laws rules on family matters to protect the weaker party better in family relationships. This innovation process is inseparable from a thorough understanding of national conditions. For example, China's legislation and judicial practice on domestic violence are closely related to social and traditional norms.
The book also illustrates the gradual increase in legal influence of East Asian States, mentioning, for example, China's establishment of the China International Commercial Court to handle foreign commercial cases, and Japan's active participation in the drafting and negotiation of international conventions. In the interests of balance, the book also mentions the shortcomings of East Asian States in the innovation process and notes areas in urgent need of improvement, such as barriers to cross-border circulation of judicial documents with other States.
In general, the style of this book is straightforward and concise, clearly presenting the development of private international law in East Asian States. This book can serve as a reference for studying or reviewing the development of legal systems in East Asian States, but it also provides more general insights into how legal systems develop and how ideas can be transplanted from other legal systems, which would be of interest to all scholars of international and comparative law.
