The Fifth Edition provides a comprehensive set of teaching materials for the course in Conflict of Laws as it is taught in most American law schools. It includes some new cases, selected for their teaching value, while also retaining the best cases from the prior edition. It also includes problems in all chapters to test the students' understanding of each segment of material covered in the course.
The first three chapters establish the historical background for the study of Conflict of Laws, introduce the students to all of the Conflicts systems existing in the United States, and explore the constitutional limits on the ability of the states to apply their law to multistate transactions and occurrences. With this background, the following four chapters examine the operation of the choice-of-law doctrines used in the areas of torts, contracts, property, and domestic relations. The grounding provided by the first three chapters allows teachers to choose those topics to teach in the following four chapters without necessarily covering the chapters in their entirety if time does not permit. The final three chapters deal with vertical choice of law (the Erie doctrine), interstate judgment enforcement, and personal jurisdiction. The book is organized so that these final three chapters can be covered out of order to suit a wide range of teaching preferences.
Each chapter contains note material following the cases to help teachers explore the full range of issues raised by the doctrines being studied. The problems contained in each chapter increase the students' comprehension of the materials and provide a basis for more interesting classroom discussions.
A comprehensive Teacher's Manual contains summaries of the main cases, suggestions about alternative course coverage, and the authors' ideas about coverage of the cases, materials, and problems also is available.
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