This collection explores and rethinks how characterisation operates to identify the relevant rules in the conflict of laws in cross-border cases.

Despite its fundamental importance in private international law, characterisation remains methodologically contested and resists uniform treatment. Bringing together scholars and practitioners, the volume offers in-depth and pluralistic accounts of characterisation's distinctive challenges and purposes. It combines historical and doctrinal analysis with new approaches, including inter-cultural and post-categorical perspectives, and examines techniques for rules of national, supranational, and international provenance.

Spanning Common Law, Civil Law, and mixed jurisdictions, the chapters test characterisation in general and in specific areas where it matters most (such as in equity, family, and corporate contexts) as well as at the intersection of private and public international law.

Caterina Benini is Adjunct Professor at Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, Italy.
Felix Berner is Senior Research Fellow at the University of Tubingen, Germany.
Johannes Ungerer is Lecturer at the Faculty of Law at the University of Oxford, UK.