Results Choice Theory

The Thesis studies on the newly rising choice-of-law theory, the result-selective theory. It isdistinctively differentiate from the traditional private international law theories, which has thecharacteristic as "jurisdiction-selecting". Since its birth in the middle of the20thcentury, theresult-selective theory has deeply influenced the development of conflicts law and produced lotsof new theories and rules in many fields, such as contracts, torts, matrimony inheritance and so on.It has gained more and more attention in the world's academy. However, most of the presentstudies focus on individual points and are in lack of integrity.This thesis not only studies in-depth the result-selective theory from theoretical point of view,but also using the field of international product liability as an example to presents a detaileddescription of legislation and judicial practice of it. Utilizing the "American Conflict of LawsRevolution" as an opportunity, the academy criticized the traditional conflict theories and rules fortheir rigidity, mechanism, and the characteristic as not taking into account of individual justice. Onthe basis of the above Review, this thesis then explores the recently emerging result-selectivetheory. It is obviously anti-traditional because of flexibility and aims at achieving just judgment.This theory takes different forms in the U.S.A. and civil-law countries. In modern Americanconflicts law field, some flexible choice of law theory have formed and been fully studied, such as"the Government Interest Analysis Theory","Better Law Theory" and "The Most SignificantRelationship Theory". They include the pursuit of fair verdicts into the process of law-choosingand applying process and practice the result-selective theory from various angels. And thosetheories have been adopted enthusiastically by the U.S. courts in a number of areas, including theforeign product liability cases. In the debts of that, a lot of experience and lessons haveaccumulated. While in civil-law countries, in the late20th century along with the codificationprocess, some conflict rules reflecting the ideological core of the result-selective theory haveappeared, such as "results selective rules " and "escape clause". Such rules at present, although ina limited number, but have been applied to a wide scope of legal relationships, such asinternational product liability, cross-border employment contracts, transnational dependencyrelations, transnational matrimony and so on. Besides introduction of the legislation practice, thisthesis also discusses some relevant issues, for example, the specialty about these norms and theeffects of them.