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46 S. C. L. Rev. 899 (1994-1995)
Choice-of-Law Rules and Forum Shopping in Australia

handle is hein.journals/sclr46 and id is 915 raw text is: Choice-of-Law Rules
and Forum Shopping in Australia
Peter Nygh
I. INTRODUCTION .................................. 899
I. CHOICE OF FORUM      .......................... 902
A. Jurisdiction Based on Service Within Territory ......... 902
B. Jurisdiction Based on Interstate Service
Under the Service and Execution of Process Act 1992  . .. 903
C. The Cross-vesting Legislation ................... 905
1. Change of Venue under the Cross-vesting Scheme .... 907
D. Diversity Jurisdiction  ....................... 909
III. CHOICE OF LAW     ............................ 911
A. Choice of Law in Jurisdiction Based
on Service of Process ....................... 911
B. Choice of law in Cross-vested Jurisdiction  .......... 913
C. Choice of Law in Diversity Jurisdiction ............. 916
D. The Proposals of the Australian Law Reform Commission       918
1. The Rule in Phillips v. Eyre ................. 918
2. Procedure  ............................                 919
IV. CONCLUSION     .............................. 920
I. INTRODUCTION
Australia, like the United States and Canada, is a federation of six states
and two self-governing territories' that have been left with considerable
autonomy to regulate private law. Unlike the United States and Canada (if one
can still include Quebec), Australia has the advantage of a shared common law
subject to the interpretation of the one supreme court, the High Court of
Australia.
As the Australian Law Reform Commission remarked in its report on
choice of law: The main scope for conflict within Australia arises in respect
* Professor of Law, Bond University, Queensland, Australia.
1. I am not considering either the non selfgoverning Jervis Bay Territory and its three
hundred inhabitants situated some two hundred kilometers south of Sydney (which for practical
purposes is part of the Australian Capital Territory) or the three inhabited external territories of
Christmas Island, the Cocos (Keeling) Islands, and Norfolk Island. So far these territories have
not raised any conflict of laws problems although Norfolk Island might offer some interesting
antiques for the discriminating forum shopper.

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