CONFLICT OF LAWS. An opposition or contrariety between the laws of different juris dictions affecting the rights of the same indi vidual. In the decision of legal controversies every court regularly applies its own law (Icy foci), i.e. the law prevailing within its jurisdic tion; but exceptionally, and not infrequently, justice requires, and the domestic law itself authorizes. the application of foreign law. The eases in which the question arises whether domes tic or foreign law should be applied are figura tively termed eases of conflict; and 'conflict of laws' is the title under which it is customary to set forth the rules by which such conflicts are adjusted. Because this branch of the law has been of international growth, and because the rules applied in the different nations are in the main similar, it is sometimes described as 'international private law.' Apart from other objections, this term is too narrow; for the rules in question apply not merely to conflicts between the laws of different nations, but also to conflicts between different cantonal or provincial laws within the same State, and to conflicts between the laws of different States within the same empire or federation. To a New York court, the
law of New Jersey is as foreign as that of Eng land or of France, and the same rules govern its application. This branch of modern law was developed on the Continent of Europe in the Middle Ages; and because in the later Middle Ages all purely local rules, whether of written or unwritten law, were termed statutes (.statuta), it was first known as the doctrine of 'collision of statutes.' It took form as a body of judicial usages, but its development was large ly controlled by the writings of leading jurists. Until the sixteenth century the authoritative writers were Italians (Bartolus and Baking) ; from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, they were French ( Dum old in, D'Argent r6, Bouhier, and Boullenois), or Dutch (Burgundus, Rodenburg, P. and J. Voet, and Huber) ; in the nineteenth century the most important treatises were those of the American, Story, and the Ger man. Savigny.
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