Choice of law in Europe and the US

There’s some interesting stuff happening in European choice of law. Erin O’Hara and I have a paper that puts these events in the perspective of our work on the market for law. On February 9 we presented the paper, Rules and Institutions in Developing a Law Market:  Views from the US and Europe, at the Tulane Law Review-Duke Center for International & Comparative Law Symposium, The European Choice- of-Law Revolution-A Chance for the United States?  Now you can read it! Here’s the abstract:

Developments in European choice of law seem to offer the US a tantalizing opportunity for escape from the chaos of state-by-state choice-of-law rules. Specifically, the Rome Regulations provide the sort of uniform choice-of-law rules that have eluded the US. Also, decisions of the European Court of Justice that permit firms to adopt home-country rules in some situations seem to facilitate jurisdictional choice by private parties. This top-down ordering of choice-of-law rules contrasts with the seemingly chaotic and decentralized system that prevails in the US. However, decentralized USstyle federalism might have something to offer Europe because choice of law in the U.S. has sparked a type of law market that helps constrain inefficient State regulatory efforts. Viewed from the perspective of which system best fosters a market for law, both the US and Europe have advantages that each could learn from the other.