Recueil des cours, Collected Courses, Tome 457

Burkhard Hess, International Dispute Resolution in the Twenty-First Century, General Course on Private International Law

This general course addresses the present state of dispute resolution and explores emerging developments from an international and comparative perspective. It focuses primarily on international dispute settlement (cross-border constellations), but also adopts a comparative procedural law perspective by examining important developments within national civil procedures.
The course starts by looking at developments over the last decades, including different methods of dispute resolution: litigation, arbitration, ADR, and the expansion of ODR. It considers different levels of dispute settlement by exploring international, regional, and domestic developments, as well as different approaches to dispute resolution, including individual claims vs. collective redress and the use of civil courts to enforce public interests. This first step allows the research area to be delineated. The next part addresses current trends in dispute resolution, including constitutionalization, efficiency, and privatization.
The course then delves into various layers and elements of dispute resolution, exploring litigation at domestic and regional levels, with a particular focus on cross-border litigation. Subsequent parts address other forms of dispute settlement, including arbitration and ADR. The concluding chapter looks towards the future, asking what we can anticipate in dispute resolution in the coming years: crises, (digital) transformations, increasing privatization and commercialization? How will the protection of subjective rights and vulnerable persons be addressed? What will be the future methods of comparative procedural law? These are the questions the course strives to answer.