14 - Huber’s Conflict of Laws in the Conceptual Battlefield

Summary

In the preceding chapters, we had the opportunity to examine in detail Huber’s conflicts treatment and to draw connections to Huber’s overall doctrinal outlook. In the process, we have come across common perceptions, or rather misperceptions, of Huber in conflicts literature. Having established the context, we have been gradually moving towards issues more specific to a doctrinal work in the conflict of laws. Our exercise is completed in this chapter, where Huber’s doctrine is examined in the light of the basic conceptual oppositions of the conflicts discourse. Huber has been often described as a territorialist and as a unilateralist. He has also been perceived as thinking of the conflict of laws in terms of addressing or seeking to avoid a conflict between the “sovereignties” of different states. His famous three axioms are a recurring invocation in all these perceptions, as indeed is the concept of comity, with the origins of which Huber has become associated as none in classical and modern consciousness.