Opinion ID: 1854829
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Choice of Law Revolution

Text: Before 1963, American choice of law jurisprudence for tort cases was uniform. All fifty states adhered to the doctrine of lex loci delicti, or the law of the place of the wrong, as espoused by Professor Beale in the First Restatement on Conflicts of Law. Under this doctrine, tort cases were governed by the law of the jurisdiction in which the wrong occurred. Thus, a suit by Michigan citizens who were involved in an accident in another jurisdiction would be governed by the law of the other jurisdiction, even if the suit were brought in this state. [4] The primary advantage of this rule was that conflicts of law questions were easy to resolve, at least in theory. Parties in litigation could usually predict what law would govern the case by determining the state where the last act necessary to create liability occurred. [5] While all states purported to adhere to the rule of lex loci delicti in the first half of this century, many state courts expressed discomfort with the rigidity of the rule. In order to mitigate what were seen as harsh results, courts developed several escape devices to the lex loci delicti rule. For example, a forum court would decline to apply the law of another jurisdiction if that law conflicted with an important public policy of the forum state. Courts would also characterize issues as procedural, instead of substantive, in order to apply the law of the forum. While the application of these escape devices avoided what were seen as unjust results, they also undermined the predictability of the lex loci delicti rule. [6] In 1963, New York became the first state to explicitly abandon the traditional approach to conflicts of law. In the seminal case of Babcock v. Jackson, 12 N.Y.2d 473, 484, 240 N.Y.S.2d 743, 191 N.E.2d 279 (1963), the New York Court of Appeals stated that the traditional rule fail[ed] to take into account essential policy considerations and objectives.... Instead of adhering to the lex loci delicti rule, the New York Court of Appeals asserted that it would consider the contacts of the tort with each jurisdiction and the interests that each government had in having its law applied. [7] Babcock sparked a revolution in conflicts of law jurisprudence. Freed from the monolithic adherence to the traditional rule, state after state revisited its conflicts rules and expressed its frustration with the lex loci delicti doctrine. By 1980, thirty-one states had abandoned the traditional rule. Currently, only ten states still purport to apply the lex loci delicti rule. [8] While Babcock slew the lex loci delicti dragon, it has not produced a consensus on how to deal with conflicts of law questions in the absence of the traditional rule. On lex loci's grave, several competing theories have sprouted. The most prominent of these modern theories is  interest analysis, an approach that the late Brainerd Currie has advocated. [9] Under this approach, courts examine the governmental interests of the involved jurisdictions. If the forum state has no interest in having its law applied but the other jurisdiction does, the law of the other jurisdiction should be chosen. If the forum state has an interest and the other does not, the court should choose forum law. If both the forum state and the alternate have an interest in having its law applied and the laws conflict, then the court should apply the forum's law. If neither jurisdiction is interested, the court should again apply forum law. While several states have adopted interest analysis, it competes for attention with other theories. Under Professor Leflar's choice influencing considerations, for example, courts ask which jurisdiction has the better rule of law. [10] The approach that the Second Restatement on the Conflicts of Law proposes, on the other hand, would require courts to determine which jurisdiction has the most significant relationship to the tort. [11] At least one state, Kentucky, has adopted a blanket lex fori approach, in which forum law will always be applied. [12] Proponents of these various approaches have engaged in a vigorous debate over the advantages and disadvantages of each approach. As Justice Riley has noted, conflicts of law has become a fecund milieu for academic scholarship. [13] While this debate is illuminating, much of it ignores the fact that, in practice, all the modern approaches to conflicts of law are relatively uniform in the results they produce. Professor Borchers has surveyed cases that purport to apply the various modern approaches and concluded that none of the modern approaches differ significantly from the others in three important respects: the percentage of times that courts apply forum law, the percentage of times that plaintiffs recover, or the percentage of times that local parties prevail. [14] In fact, Professor Borchers' research shows that each of the modern approaches tend to favor significantly the application of forum law. Applying the modern approaches, courts select forum law between approximately fifty-five and seventy-seven percent of the time. [15] This has led one commentator to note: On reading a substantial number of these cases over the years, one has a feeling that the courts may not be doing what they purport to do, that is, employing the modern choice-of-law theories in a neutral way to determine what law applies. Rather, one suspects that courts employing the new theories have a very strong preference for forum law that frequently causes them to manipulate the theories so that they end up applying forum law.[ [16] ] Likewise, Professor Sedler has noted: [T]he results in actual cases that arise are not likely to differ depending on which particular modern approach a court is purportedly applying or on whether a court even commits itself to a particular approach. Moreover, there seems to be little dispute among the commentators that the courts are generally reaching functionally sound and fair results in the cases coming before them for decision.[ [17] ] This preference for forum law is hardly surprising. The tendency toward forum law promotes judicial economy: judges and attorneys are experts in their state's law, but have to expend considerable time and resources to learn another state's law. Thus, on surveying current conflicts of law jurisprudence, one can reasonably conclude that only two distinct conflicts of law theories actually exist. One, followed by a distinct minority of states, mandates adherence to the lex loci delicti rule. The other, which bears different labels in different states, calls for courts to apply the law of the forum unless important policy considerations dictate otherwise.