Dutch private international law at the end of the 20th century: pluralism of methods

Abstract

When in 1838 a Civil Code was introduced for the whole territory of the Netherlands it was not deemed necessary to include provisions on private international law. A statute of 1829, reflecting in some provisions the ancient statutist theory, provided the only statutory basis for dealing with problems of private international law. As a consequence the development of private international law befell largely to the courts, which in their turn sought guidance from scholarly writings. On account of a technicality in the appeal system, the highest court in the Netherlands, the “Hoge Raad” (Supreme Court), a highly influential institution in the development of Dutch law, was until 1963 practically excluded from deciding private international law cases. The result was that in the absence of any binding authority the (lower) courts were more or less left to their own devices and that in many instances the decisions were strongly result-oriented.