| There is no substantial relationship between the civil code and private international law (PIL) if PIL is grounded on unilateralism, such as the statutory theory of the Middle Ages, or the governmental interest analysis of contemporary American conflicts law. Codified PIL in modern civil law countries, however, has been based on multilateralism much more than unilateralism, which leads to a complicated relationship between PIL and the civil code. The civil code provides PIL with a conceptual system of legal relationships and a justification for the making of concrete conflict rules. Consequently, PIL either is integrated into the general or special part, or becomes an ancillary part, of the civil code in many countries. If PIL must be integrated into the civil code itself, the less damaging place to the whole civil system for PIL is the special part of the code. PIL has reached far beyond the scope of the civil code in many aspects, including no necessity for the concept of legal acts in PIL, the easiness to unify civil and commercial law, the introduction of some concepts unique to PIL for the purpose of characterization, and the openness to values from such other legal areas as constitutional law, public law and international law. So the best place for PIL in the legal system is to be enacted as a separate special legislation of the civil code. The Chinese Law on Choice of Law for Foreign-related Civil Relationships should be developed into a separate law combining both civil and commercial conflict rules, but not into a comprehensive PIL Code integrating rules on the application of law, jurisdiction, and recognition and enforcement of foreign judgments, so as to avoid serious damages to the organic and lively relationship between PIL and civil code. |
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