• Party Expectations
• Comity/Sovereignty - Desire to do right by other countries or other states
• Uniformity - Ex: for business entities, apply the law of the state of incorporation
• Predictability - We want people to be able to predict the result

• Public Policy Reason - Sovereignty 
• State Z's law is so hideous to natural rights and natural laws that we won't apply the law of Z no matter what!
• Procedure Reason - Too hard/too inconvenient
• State courts have the greatest interest in protecting its own courts from stale lawsuits  (ex: by shorter statute of limitations)

• Tort: Lex loci delicti (law of the place of injury)
• Contract: Lex loci contractus (law of the place of contracting)
• Land: Lex situs (law of the situs of the property)
• Procedure: Lex fori (forum law)

• Created by Joseph Beale
• Defined: At the moment a CoA arises, rights VEST accoding to the place where the crucial event occurred. 
• Ex: When an event occures in MI, MI law governs it. Because the event occurred in MI, a right was created (or vested) in MI. The contours of that right were controlled entirely by MI law, because tehre was no other law that could define the contours of that vested right because no otehr law could apply that right.

1. A few, broad, single-contact, jurisdiction-selecting (i.e., content-blind) rules
2. Coupled with an array of escape devices
• Characterization
• Renvoi
• Public Policy 

• Vicarious liability
• If I lend my car to A and authorize him to drive into OH, but in fact he dives into MI and commits a tort, we won't apply the law of MI, because I had only authorized him to drive in OH.
• Duty or privilege to act
• Poison
• apply the law of the place where the harmful force first had an impact on the victim - where she first fell ill / gross symptoms

• The place of contracting (or performance, see below)
• Mailbox Rule 
• The state where the acceptance was trasmitted
• The Performance Exception to the "law of the place of making" rule
• Provides that questions concerning issues of performance are to be governed by the law of the place of performance.

• Manipulation of the place of making (Milliken)
• Use of the making/performacnce distinction (Louis Dreyfus v. Paterson)
• Can also use teh regular escape devices
• Char
• Renvoi
• PP

• Renvoi is the doctrine under which a F court, in resorting to foreign law, adopts as well the foreign law's COL principles, which may in turn refer the F court back to the law of the forum.
• If the foreign law's COL principles refer the F court back to the law of the forum, the court may either 
• Accept the renvoi 
• Reject the renvoi

• In order to refuse to apply the foreign law on PP grounds, the court would need to find that law "vicious, wicked, or immoral, and shocking to the prevailing moral sense."
• By invoking PP, a court could magisterially sweep away the results called for by the 1st RS and, usually without any explanation, apply its own law to achieve the desired result.
• 2 things the forum can do if it finds trouble w/ law on PP grounds:
• Dismiss on the merits 
• Refuse to exercise jurisd (this is more respectful to forum law)

1. Center of Gravity Test
2. Interest Analysis
3. Leflar's Better Law
4. New Territorialism
5. Second RS's Most Significant Relationship Test

• Determining what the best policy behind the decision is
• Decide: What is the relationship between the policies that motivate the competing states' laws and the contacts the case has with each state
• We care about how the reasons relate to the contact
• By doing this, you'll see if it's a true conflict, false conflict, or unprovided-for case

1. More Moderate & Restrained Analysis
2. Comparative Impairment
3. Relative Commitment
4. Apply forum law (Currie's solution)
5. Manipulating Interest Analysis

• Leflar led a movement in the U.S. in the 1920s called "legal realism"
• Leflar argued that a series of considerations embodied the factors which actually motivate courts to make decisions -- 5 choice-influencing considerations that Leflar perceived as providing a working basis for judicial decision-making:
• Predictability of Result
• Maintenance of Interstate & International Order
• Simplify the Judicial Task
• Advance the Forum's Own Policy Interests
• Apply the BETTER Rule of Law

If there is no COL statute directing the court to follow its state law on COL, then §6(2) counsels a choice based on a series of factors:

1. the needs of the interstate & international system;
2. the relevant policies of the forum;
3. the relevant policies of other  interested states & the relative interests of those states in the determination of the particular issue;
4. the protection of justified expectations;
5. the basic policies underlying the particular field of law;
6. certainty, predictability, and uniformity of result;
7. ease in determination and application of the law to be applied.

1. Specific (several-don't need to know them by heart)
2. §145 - General Tort Statute
• §145(1) calls for application of the law of the state with the most significant relationship, referring to §6
• §145(2) lists a group of contacts that will typically be relevant in tort cases:
• place where injury occurred;
• place where conduct causing injury occurred;
• domicil, res, nationality, place of incorp, and POB of the parties
• place where relationship, if any, b/t parties is centered

• If no COL clause: §188
• controlling law is "local law of the state which, w/ respect to that issue, has the MSR...under the principles stated in §6"
• lists several factors peculiar to contract law that will help inform the §6 choice: place of contracting; place of neg of the K; place of perf; location of the subkect matter in the K; domicil, res, nationality, place of incorp, and POB of the parties
• presumptions
• If COL clause: §187
• COL clause will be applied if the particular issue is one which the parties could have resolved by an explicit provision in their agreement.
• COL clause will be applied even if the issue is one which the parties couldnt have resolved by an explicit provision in their agreement, unless
• chosen state has no substantial rel to the parties or the transaction AND there is no other reas basis for the parties' choice OR
• chosen law would violate PP of the MSR state

• Land: Apply the law of the situs of the property
• Movables: 
• Transfers during life (Inter Vivos): Apply the law of the place where the property is located
• Transfers @ Death: Apply the law of the state where the decedent died domiciled
• Marital Property: Apply the law of the state where the spouses were domiciled at the time the movable was acquired

Generally, the F usually will apply its own rules concerning the conduct of litigation (its own rules of procedure), even when it applies the law of another state (substantive law) to resolve other issues in the case.

1. The COG in an auto-guest case is the domicile of the 2 parties, if common, and if the auto is registered there.
2. Favors domiciliary party, whether P or D, if the accident occurs in their domicile and the local rule is favorable to them. Thus, if the P-guest is injured in his domicile and that law grants recovery, it applies; if the D-driver causes an accident in his domicile, but there is no liability, then that rule applies.
3. Where P & D have different domiciles, and the accident occurs in neither domicile, or the local law is unfavorable to the domicilary, then ordinarily the law of the place of injury will be chosen, unless some other jurisd has a greater interest in the outcome of the case. 

• Federal courts must apply federal procedural law (FRCP)
• Federal courts sitting in diversity (i.e., if the parties are citizens of different states or non-US citizens) must apply the substantive law (statute and case law) of the state where it sits.