Private international law, or conflicts of laws as it is perhaps more accurately also known, is not a branch of international law as the term is used (and defined) in this Encyclopaedic Dictionary . The expression refers rather to that branch of municipal law which deals with cases having a foreign element, i.e., a contact with some system of law other than the domestic system. The central issues for private international law in the Anglo-American systems are choice of jurisdiction, i.e., whether a court in State A has jurisdiction to deal with a case having a foreign element, and choice of law, i.e., whether the ordinary rules of law of State A shall apply to the case, or whether some other system of law shall apply.
- Grant, John P., et al.
"Sources of Conflict of Laws. Each court applies the law of its own state, as it understands it, including its own conception of Conflict of Laws. It derives this law from the same sources used for determining all its law: from precedent, from analogy, from legal reason, and from consideration of ethical and social need." Restatement First, Conflict of Law § 5
Sources of private international law include domestic legislation and judicial decisions as well as treaties and standards issued by international rule-making and dispute settlement bodies.
