The position that private international law occupies in the Canadian constitutional framework is complex and evolving. Essentially, private international law is part of provincial law, which appears most clearly in the difference between the private international law of Quebec and that of the other provinces. But its location in the provincial sphere does not mean that provinces have unrestricted power to legislate with respect to the private international law applied in their courts. The ability to adopt rules with respect to jurisdiction, foreign judgments and choice of law are subject to increasing, albeit still vague, constitutional constraints. The Morguard case has probably set the direction for future development of the constitutional aspects of jurisdiction and foreign judgments, although it has not settled them definitively in any way. So far as choice of law is concerned the only relevant jurisprudence, which deals with when the subject matter of legislation can be said to be ‘in the province’, is highly unsatisfactory.

What immediately strikes the eye of a modem Huber reader is his clear perception of the realities and social and political issues perennially implicated by choice-of-law and the candid mirroring of such issues and realities in his proposed principles and rules. Huber ‘…posed in stark simplicity the basic dilemma of conflicts law in modern times to mediate between the pretensions of territorial sovereignty and the needs of international commerce’. This accounts for the seemingly everlasting freshness and relevance of Huber's writings.

Scholars of comparative law of all periods, and especially Rabel and Rene David, have drawn attention to the interesting relationship between legal systems, so that however diverse they may be, none is absolutely original and free of influences, which are reciprocal, necessary and enriching.

The Charter of the Organization of American States, approved in 1948, assigned to the Inter-American Council of Jurists, among other functions, the task of promoting ‘the development and the codification of international law’ (Article 67). Therefore, on September 6, 1949, the Inter-American Juridical Committee, which was the Permanent Commission of the Council (Article 68), presented a Report that favoured the revision of the Bustamante Code, taking into account the Montevideo Treaties and the American Restatement of Conflict of Laws.

The movement for development of private international law in the Americas through multilateral conventions (which is referred to below as the Inter-American Conventional Movement) began in 1878; and the great influence which the European school of legal thought has exerted on it can be perceived throughout its history. It was in the Americas that one of the decisive steps in the world-wide trend towards the development of private international law through conventions took place, and it is there that the considerable influence of the Hague Conference on this subject can be traced to its origin. Legal thought on a global scale is becoming universal and thus the ideas of the Dutch scholar Jitta, expressed at the end of the last century, that the State must respect the individuals forming part of a universal society and that to achieve this end, the State itself must find homogeneous solutions through treaties, are now a reality. In order to try to give an overall view of this movement in private international law in the Americas, section 2 will deal briefly with the development of the three historical stages, which, in my opinion, are the most significant, after which section 3 will deal with the fourth or current stage, following which section 4 will end with some brief concluding remarks.