Inconvenient Court Principle In The Jurisdiction Of International Civil Litigation

With the deepening development of international civil and commercial exchanges, the type and amount of transnational civil and commercial litigation are significantly increasing in recent years. Due to the complexity and particularity of transnational civil and commercial litigation, countries are trying to exercise of its own court of jurisdiction over foreign-related civil and commercial cases reasonably in the legislation and judicial practice. On one hand, countries in legislation defines a broad jurisdiction over foreign-related civil and commercial cases; on the other hand, legislation and jurisdiction of the parties is too general, and usually results in forum-shopping, which in reality brought heavy work burden for the appellate court, and even work insurmountable obstacles. Under this background, the international civil jurisdiction, the inconvenient court principle is increasingly becoming an indispensable important system. Inconvenient court principle originated in Anglo-American law system and in those Anglo-American law system countries, the theory is relatively mature. Since the end of the 20th century, there have been a lot of cases in terms of inconvenient court theory, which have contributed to the foreign cases jurisdiction. In this paper, on the basis of introduction of inconvenient court principle applicable conditions, pattern of both Britain and American judicial practice, the author further analyzed how to perfect the inconvenient court principle in China, and how to provide Chinese courts with guidelines to establish reasonable jurisdiction over foreign-related civil and commercial cases.My paper is divided into three parts:The first part firstly summarizes the definition and origin of the inconvenient court principle, and further analyzes the value and utility of the inconvenient court principle. Specifically, the author analyzes the reasons why the inconvenient court principle is widely accepted worldwide:one is to prevent those "forum- shopping" that may bring negative effects; the second is to release the negative effects of overly broad "legislative jurisdiction" in domestic legislation, namely the "long arm jurisdiction", which usually brought excessive burden for domestic courts.The second part, based on the introduction of the Anglo-American legislation and judicial practice, makes a deep analysis on the theory of the Anglo-American inconvenient court principle. Simultaneously, this part also makes references to the famous Anglo-American countries' cases in this area.The third part is about the inconvenient court in China, which analyzes the necessity of the legislation and the relevant legislative Suggestions. This part firstly introduces Chinese system of jurisdiction over foreign-related civil and commercial cases, and then introduces the judicial practice of the inconvenient court theory. Furthermore, this part finally introduces the latest judicial explanation issued by the supreme people's court in 2015, and then makes a comment on this new interpretation, and finally gives suggestions to perfect the rules of exerting inconvenient court principle.