Transnational Commercial Law and Conflict of Laws: Institutional Co-operation and Substantive Complementarity by Herbert Kronke
This Hague lecture takes issue with suggestions that transnational commercial law and its wide variety of instruments, including soft-law instruments, might be an alternative to classic administration of trans-border transactions and disputes by way of conflict-of-laws rules. Rather, the latter and the former complement each other. Moreover, the intergovernmental Organizations charged with developing and modernizing conflict-of-laws rules and substantive rules are co-operating with a view to enhancing the tools at the disposal of businesses and courts. The lecture identifies and explains current examples in the area of financial services, secured transactions, and contract law.

The Human Rights of Undocumented Migrants by Loretta Ortiz Ahlf
International human rights law has offered humankind various international instruments that guarantee every person the effective protection of his or her human rights. However, these rights have not been effectively guaranteed by States in the case of undocumented migrants because these people do not have legal status in the destination country. The first section of this work defines the concept of undocumented worker in order to differentiate him or her from a refugee, an asylee or a displaced person. Universal and regional human rights treaties, as well as international jurisprudence, are then analysed, centring attention on the human rights that are violated most frequently against undocumented workers, such as the right to non-discrimination, the right to residence and free movement, the right of access to justice, labour rights the right to freedom and the right to family reunification, among others.

Pan-Africanism and International Law by Abdulqawi A. Yusuf
Pan-Africanism offers a unique vantage point to study Africa's encounters with international law: first, as a continent whose political entities were excluded from the scope of application of the Eurocentric version of international law that was applied among the self-styled club of "civilized nations"; second, through the emergence of African States as subjects of international law willing to contribute to the reform and further development of the law as a universal interstate normative system; and third, as members of the OAU and the AU acting collectively to generate innovative principles and rules, which, though applicable only in the context of intra-African relations, either go beyond those existing at the universal level or complement them by broadening their scope. This study examines those encounters through the various stages in the evolution of Pan-Africanism from a diaspora-based movement, engaged in the struggle for the emancipation of the peoples of the continent, to groupings of independent States and intergovernmental organizations which continue to promote African unity and influence the development of international law to make it more reflective of diverse legal traditions and values.

Efficiency in Private International Law by Toshiyuki Kono
Private international law (PIL) problems have existed for centuries when people from various territories and religious and social groups engaged in mutual contacts. Some of the core issues of this discipline have been critically reviewed during the so-called conflicts revolution which took place during the twentieth century in the American academic literature and court practice. However it seems that not much discussion on methodologi...