ASSUMING REGULATORY AUTHORITY FOR TRANSNATIONAL TORTS: AN INTERSTATE AFFAIR? A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE ON THE CANADIAN PRIVATE INTERNATIONAL LAW TORT RULES

Abstract

In Tolofson v. Jensen, the Supreme Court of Canada determined that in most cases the law of the place where the tort occurred has exclusive authority to regulate all legal aspects related to it. In developing this choice of law rule, the Supreme Court relied on an analogy between Private International Law and Public International law. This allows Private International Law to claim a structural, neutral function in the distribution of legislative authority in the international realm and to ignore both private law and public law considerations. To best reveal the way in which the Supreme Court injected these limitations into Private International Law by reference to Public International Law, I show the striking similarity between the Supreme Court’s reasoning and several Private International Law writings at the end of the 19th century in Continental Europe. In the context of the extraterritorial tortious activity of multinational corporations, these limitations make Private International Law oblivious to arguments of Corporate Social Responsibility scholars showing that a multinational corporation may legitimately be regulated by the state of its headquarters, even for extraterritorial conduct. Overall, I argue that an overemphasis on legislative authority as a symbol of state sovereignty transforms Private International Law matters generally, and transnational torts in particular, in inter-state affairs, removed from the interests and pleas of the individuals and communities affected by them.