NYLUND, A. / / CABRAL, A.
Procedural agreements constitute a nebulous concept situated at the intersection of civil procedure law and private law, between the public sphere of the formal justice system and the private sphere of contract law. This book employs a broad definition of procedural contracts: what matters is not the legal categorisations but the procedural effects of the contract or agreement. While procedural agreements were earlier rejected with few exceptions, notably choice-of-court and arbitration agreements, a shift towards more permissive views has occurred in recent years.
Based on reports covering 20 jurisdictions in the Americas, Asia, and Europe, this book examines procedural contracts, the variation in the extent to which they are given procedural effects, the types of issues that the parties are allowed to agree on, the limits of such agreements, and the manifest and tacit arguments for and against them.
The special national reports discuss the legal framework of such contracts, be it statutory law, case law or general principles of law, and how procedural contracts are understood in legal doctrine. Many of them address the issue of whether there is a gap between the general, often restrictive, attitude towards procedural agreements and legal practice that recognises, at least some, procedural contracts beyond jurisdiction and arbitration clauses.
