John Coyle
University of North Carolina School of Law
John F. Coyle is the Reef C. Ivey II Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of North Carolina School of Law. He is a past chair of the AALS Section on Conflict of Laws and is currently an Adviser for the American Law Institute’s Restatement (Third) of Conflict of Laws. His articles on choice-of-law clauses, forum selection clauses, cross-border dispute resolution, and international commercial contracts have appeared in journals such as the Notre Dame Law Review, the William & Mary Law Review, the North Carolina Law Review, and the Iowa Law Review. Before entering the academy, he worked as a transactional attorney at Covington & Burling LLP and clerked for a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
Limits on Damages for Breach of a Forum Selection Clause
Tanya Monestier and I recently posted a draft of a new paper, Limits on Damages for Breach of a Forum Selection Clause, that discusses an important issue at the intersection of contract law and conflict of laws—when it is appropriate to award damages for breach of an exclusive forum selection clause. We build on Tanya’s…
Continue ReadingThe Billion-Dollar Determination of Foreign Law Question
The ongoing litigation in New York relating to the validity of certain notes issued by Venezuela’s state-owned oil company has received extensive coverage here at TLB. In 2022, I explained that the case presented a billion-dollar choice-of-law question. That choice-of-law question was answered in 2024 when the New York Court of Appeals held the validity…
Continue ReadingOpting Out of Federal Law II: Foreign Choice-of-Law Clauses
In a prior post, I examined when a choice-of-law clause selecting the law of a U.S. state may be used to avoid federal laws. In this post, I consider whether a choice-of-law clause selecting the law of a foreign country may be used to accomplish this same goal. The post first examines situations where the…
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