Formation and Development of the Legislation on Ukrainian International Private Law

Abstract

The paper analyzes the case of legislation and case practice in Ukraine, in particular the trends in the current process of codifying international private law. The analysis of international private law documents approved for the past 35 years internationally shows that the majour forms (ways) of modern codifications of International Private Law are the following: 1) introbranch form — within the general codification of civil law; 2) interbranch form, the codification o civil law includes a special part with the majour norms and institutes of general and special parts of international private law; 3) autonomous branch form — issuing a special law applying to codifying international private law; 4) complex autonomous form — issuing a law or code combining the principles and conflict of law norms of international Private Law as well as the provisions of international civil process. Ukraine chose a large-scale codification of international private law, i.e. approved a complex autonomous law On International Private Law (enacted as of September 1, 2005), applicable to the choice of law and civil conflicts concerning foreign law and order. This way of codifying international private law is typical of the pluralist concept of private law dominating in Ukraine currently. The law materialized the idea of converging formalist and pragmatic approaches to conflict of law regulation. The case practice for the period of the applicable law since 2005 has shown its relevance and demonstrated interesting examples of its application. Between 2010 and 2013, the law of 2005 experienced significant changes, which in turn may not be considered as a reform of Ukrainian international private law. The paper concludes that currently, the Ukrainian law on international private law requires updating due to the development of European conflict of law regulation and formation of new conflict of law approaches.