Judicial Jurisdiction in International Cases: The Supreme Court\u27s Unfinished Business

While the shortcomings of the common law rules of private international law were being reformed by statute in England, Canadian law, left to judicial development, remained mired in nineteenth-century thinking. A much overdue reassessment was finally undertaken by the Supreme Court earlier this decade. In Morguard Investments Ltd. v. De Savoye and Hunt v. T & N plc the Court recast the common law rules on jurisdiction and the enforcement of foreign judgments to conform with its perception of the new world order and Canadian federal structure. It then proceeded to endow these rules with constitutional authority. Although the Court\u27s emerging restatements of private international law have generated a growing body of analysis, little attention has been paid to date to the Court\u27s review of the law on forum non conveniens in Amchem Products v. BCWCB, buried as it was in a case dealing with the more dramatic topic of anti-suit injunctions. The forum non conveniens aspect of the case is, however, of greater importance if we are to judge by the burgeoning lower court jurisprudence on that issue alone