Foreign Relations Law as a Method of Private International Law's Theoretical Self-Reflection and Critique

In this essay, I think with Karen Knop about the heuristic and critical potential of the framework of Foreign Relations Law (FRL) for Private International Law (PrIL). I apply the framework of FRL to the recognition of foreign marriages in Denmark to study how PrIL is operationalized by domestic authorities. FRL helps us see how PrIL's operationalization engages a wide array of legal fields, including Public International Law (PIL), domestic administrative law, and immigration law, as well as the domains of foreign service and foreign policy. In doing so, PrIL in this context draws upon all these fields’ rationales and implicit assumptions. I argue that a FRL perspective not only contributes to PrIL's theoretical self-reflection, but also enhances PrIL's capacity for subversiveness—“its ability to unsettle by showing a given legal system's assumptions and approaches to be a matter of choice rather than simply common sense.”1