Silberman: Some Judgements on Judgments: A View from America

Linda Silberman (New York Univ. - Law) has published "Some Judgements on Judgments: A View from America" (King's Law Journal, Vol. 19, No. 2, 2008). Here's the abstract:

Professor Silberman's article "Some Judgements on Judgments" offers an overview of foreign judgment recognition and enforcement in the United States and in various other countries in the context of discussion of a 2006 proposal of the American Law Institute (for which she was Co-Reporter) to craft a national federal law for the United States on the recognition and enforcement of foreign judgments. Professor Silberman explains how the ALI project, entitled "Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Judgments: Analysis and Proposed Federal Statute", was informed by adopting a comparative perspective. National solutions, such as those in Australia, Canada, England, Germany, Italy, and Japan were important guides for the project as were regional arrangements, such as the EU Regulation adopted for Member States of the European Union. The article surveys various national laws on such issues as (1) the types of judgments entitled to recognition/enforcement, (2) the fairness of procedures (3) the role of public policy (4) the jurisdictional basis for the initial judgment and (5) the issue of reciprocity. Professor Silberman views the ALI Project as offering a model for a national law that incorporates a transnational perspective - an approach necessary to fill a vacuum left by the absence of any world-wide convention on the recognition and enforcement of foreign country judgments. Professor Silberman first presented this material as the 2006 Graveson Memorial Lecture, delivered at King's College; the article has been updated through May 2008 to take account of subsequent developments.