THE ENFORCEMENT OF FOREIGN JUDGMENTS IN ANGLO-AMERICAN LAW

Authors

Hessel E. Yntema, University of Michigan Law School

Abstract

Conflicts of laws are the necessary result of the division of judicial business. There are too many legal actions arising in localities too diffused to be tried in a single court or system of courts; consequently, litigation has to be distributed, and a highly complex body of jurisdictional regulations has been evolved to control the distribution. Once admit the multiplicity of courts, and diversities of law appear. Not only does the procedure in particular courts respond in some degree to the local traditions of the bar and to the specialized needs of the communities served, but indigenous precedents and practices establish themselves, which exercise an inevitable, if subtle, effect upon the conceptions of substantive law locally applied in judicial decision as well as in legislation. In an area so great and populous as the United States, this natural variety in both the administration of justice and formal legislation possesses sinister possibilities, which are, however, largely obviated by a common type of legal training, by a common body of legal doctrine, by the example of the federal courts and the state appellate courts, and by the numerous agencies which promote the interpenetration of legal ideas and practices. But to attain complete standardization appears neither feasible nor desirable. The fact that there will always be a measure of local independence in the development of legal institutions, even in a highly centralized, bureaucratic state, lies at the basis of the conception of judicial jurisdiction.

Recommended Citation

Hessel E. Yntema, THE ENFORCEMENT OF FOREIGN JUDGMENTS IN ANGLO-AMERICAN LAW, 33 Mich. L. Rev. 1129 (1935).
Available at: https://repository.law.umich.edu/mlr/vol33/iss8/2