This is a book about international commercial transactions and the litigation that results from them. It focuses on litigation in national courts, not international ones. The international element may affect the proceedings in three main ways:

1. the international element may call into question the power of the court to hear the case (its jurisdiction) and raise the issue of whether it should exercise that power, even if it has it;

2. the court may have to consider the application of foreign law (choice of law); and

3. the court may have to take account of a foreign judgment.

These three issues form the main themes of the book, but we will also look at other aspects of international civil procedure – for example, international freezing injunctions and the procedures for obtaining evidence from abroad – as well as questions that verge on public international law, such as extraterritoriality.

The reference in the subtitle to ‘Private International Law’ links up with the more traditional subject that deals with these matters. However, this is not a traditional book. First, it is practice-oriented, not theory-oriented: extensive analysis of abstruse concepts will not be found. Secondly, it adopts a functional approach. Law should serve economic and social objectives: it is not an end in itself, based on supposedly self-justifying principles. This does not mean that logic has no place: it has a function, that of promoting certainty.