Introductory Remarks
The main aim of present work is, not to introduce
and examine every facet of private international law, to clarify basic
concepts and answers to some vexing problems that have been haunting
Thai academic circles for many decades. Why does the paper resort to
a comparative method? The answer is very simple because private international
law, or conflict of laws, is chiefly concerned with a legal method or
technique of choosing and applying as well as interpreting foreign law
to a civil case containing foreign element(1).
As regards the methodologies used in this piece, it
is widely accepted among renowned scholars that, among other things,
a comparative analysis is an appropriate approach to understand how
private international law works(2),
thereupon, the present author relies my theme of study on the comparative
method. Not surprisingly, most eminent professors of private international
law, such as Ernst Rabel, Martin Wolff, Hessel Yntema, Graverson, Albert
Ehrenzweig et al, are comparativist! Accordingly, a study of private
international law without the comparative survey inevitably leads to
a legal narcissism, as in American lawyers and the so called the American
Revolution(3),
resulting in rigid adherence to their own idea, consequently parochial
views.
