The Case for a US Declaration Under Article 22 of the Choice of Court Convention

Authors

Ronald A. Brand, University of Pittsburgh School of LawFollow

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2025

Abstract

In this article, written for the festschrift honoring Professor David P. Stewart at Georgetown Law Center, I recommend that the United States exercise the opportunity to take an Article 22 declaration when ratifying the 2005 Hague Choice of Court Convention. While both the jurisdiction rules in Chapter II and the recognition and enforcement rules in Chapter III of that Convention are otherwise limited to the narrowly-defined exclusive choice of court agreements, non-exclusive choice of court agreements play a significant role in international commercial relationships. Article 22 offers the opportunity to create a regime of states that will apply the judgments recognition rules of the Convention to judgments from courts in which jurisdiction was based on a non-exclusive choice of court agreement. This avoids having non-exclusive agreements considered in the court of origin under the Convention, thus preventing the need for rules dealing with parallel litigation but furthers the basic thrust of the Convention in increasing the recognition and enforcement of judgments under common rules. The recent Swiss Article 22 declaration makes a U.S. declaration particularly valuable. After reviewing the benefits of a declaration, and finding no real disadvantages, I conclude that the U.S. ratification of the Convention should include a declaration opting in to the Article 22 regime for recognition and enforcement of judgments resulting from non-exclusive choice of court agreements.

Recommended Citation

Ronald A. Brand, The Case for a US Declaration Under Article 22 of the Choice of Court Convention, 56 Georgetown Journal of International Law, forthcoming (2025).
Available at: https://scholarship.law.pitt.edu/fac_articles/602