Hague Conference Moves Forward on Enforcement of Foreign Judgments

           At the Fall Meeting of the International Law Section of the American Bar Association, last week in Montreal,  there was word that the Hague Conference on Private International Law  is resuming work on the recognition and enforcement of foreign judgments.  This work will be treated as a priority and a special commission may take on this work.    Apparently the United States has been pushing for more progress on judgments.   This is encouraging.  The world needs a treaty for judgments for all the same reasons that support the widely adopted New York Arbitration Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards.  The existing judgments treaty, the 1971 Convention on the recognition and enforcement of foreign judgments in Civil and Commercial Matters, was never signed by more than five countries and was never signed by the United States, European Union, Russia, the People’s Republic of China or other major states.  There is to be a report on progress to the Conference Council in 2016. 

            A proposal for a convention for the recognition and enforcement of protection orders is less likely to move forward.   Protection orders include restraining orders issued in family cases.  Although the Council invites further “exploratory work”, such work is “subject to available resources”; in other words, this work does not have priority.