Definition of Jurisdiction in the Context of Pri...
International civil jurisdiction generally refers to the power of a state,normally exercised through its courts,to decide legal issues and disputes of civil and commercial nature involving foreign elements.It should be noted that the question of determining international civil jurisdiction should be distinguished from two others:
First,from the question of which court of a certain country,e.g.,China,is competent to entertain a particular action.Is it a Basic People’s Court,or an Intermediate People’s Court,or a Higher People’s Court,or the Supreme People’s Court? Is it the court of the district where the defendant resides,or the court of the place where the contract on which the action is based was made or was to be performed? Such questions of intra-territorial competence have little,if any,relation to private international law.We are concerned with the context of private international law not the question of which of a country’s courts is competent,but of which country’s courts are competent.2(https://www.daowen.com)
Second,from the question of the effect in one country of judicial proceedings that have taken place in another; in particular,from the question whether foreign judgments are to be recognized and executed elsewhere.This is undoubtedly a question of private international law,and it will be treated later.But it is different from the problem which is the subject of the present chapter.Here we are dealing only with the jurisdiction of the courts of country X as it exists according to the law of X.Later we shall have to deal with the jurisdiction of the courts of Y as it is recognized by the law of X.In both cases the issue is the delimitation of jurisdiction.French jurists speak in the first case of “compétence général directe,” in the second of “compétence général indirecte.” 3 Unfortunately,the delimitation of jurisdiction is very different in the two cases.Every country is inclined to concede to its own courts a wider jurisdiction than it is prepared to recognize to foreign courts,and few rules of private international law prevent states from establishing such discordance.A distribution of judicial competence or unwritten international law rarely exists except in very limited areas such as choice of forum,and immunity of foreign states,sovereigns,and diplomatic representatives.Thus every country is at liberty to decide in which cases it will itself assume jurisdiction (and whether it claims exclusive or merely concurrent jurisdiction),and in which cases it will recognize jurisdiction (again,either exclusive or concurrent).