The regulation of jurisdictional competence in private international law: a comparative law study in civil and commercial matters.

Summary Although it is receiving increasing attention, the subject of international jurisdiction has traditionally given rise to less sophisticated intellectual constructions than that of conflict of laws. Unlike the latter, it is not the subject of any general theory worthy of the name. However, in international matters, the choice of forum often has decisive consequences on the outcome of the dispute. Moreover, the differences between the laws on direct jurisdiction are singularly radical. The aim of this study is therefore to answer the question of where to place the limits of the international jurisdiction of courts by identifying, at the end of a comparison between the methods of regulating jurisdiction employed in civil law and common law systems, the basic components of a general theory of direct jurisdiction common to these systems. In this perspective, we will first attempt to answer the question of the intensity of the links that the judge of the forum must maintain with the dispute, using not the hierarchical model of the pyramid of norms, but the regulatory model of the network, which is better adapted to private international law. But the international jurisdiction of the court of the forum is not only dependent on its links with the dispute: it is also sometimes influenced by the jurisdiction that other States attribute to their own courts. The regulation of jurisdictional competence then requires consideration of the competence of the foreign court, in cases and according to procedures that need to be specified.