Public policy as a fundamental legal conception precluding the application of foreign law in the age of globalisation
[Thesis]
Abdel Wahab, Mohamed Salah Eldin
University of Manchester
2004
Ph.D.
University of Manchester
2004
Public policy is considered one of the landmarks of private international law. It has beena rich source of attraction to many scholars across the globe. While it is generallyconsidered an expression of the prevailing major value-system norms and fundamentalnotions of justice in the forum, its variability has made it extremely difficult for allthose who attempt to research the concept to ascribe a workable all-embracingdefinition and criterion for this dark tunnel of private international law.Similarly, globalisation as one of the most powerful forces shaping our modem worldrepresents a perplexing complex notion that has intensified economic, political, legal,social, and cultural cross-border relations. Thus, it has impacted on and transformedtraditional legal and cultural institutions.It is exactly in this context that the present thesis aims to analyse the concept of publicpolicy in English, French and Egyptian legal systems, evaluate the phenomenon ofglobalisation and assess its impact, especially with respect to trends of culturalinteraction on the evolutionary path of public policy, and provide a specific examinationof the applications of public policy in relation to globalisation in family law andinternational commercial arbitration.The importance of this study not only stems from the analytical and comparativeapproaches utilised, the diversity of issues covered and their theoretical and practicalaspects, but also from the fact that it represents the first study on the relation betweenpublic policy in conflict of laws and globalisation and amongst the relatively few thataddress the interrelation between globalisation and law.