PRINCÍP NAJUŽŠEJ VÄZBY V KOLÍZNOM PRÁVE

The closest connection principle has dominated European conflicts law for around two hundred years. Yet the (Czecho-)Slovak scholarship fails to explicitly address this topic in adequate depth not only in university textbooks, but also in scientific writing. Without any theoretical foundations to work with, it is of little surprise that the Slovak conflicts code – Act No. 97/1963 Coll. on private international and procedural law (PIL Act) treats the closest connection principle in a rather confused manner. Against this background, the ambition of this paper is to serve as an introductory, but still rather complex treatise on the mentioned principle. We structure the text into two parts. In the first part, we clarify the meaning of the closest connection maxim. Afterwards, we confront it with other related notions of conflicts law on the one side and with concurring values on the other. We conclude the first part by unravelling the relationship between the PIL Act and the closest connection principle. In the second part, we focus on conflicts of law tools designed to strengthen the fulfilment of the said principle when dealing with more or less atypical cases. On this note, we discuss the usage of the closest connection directly as a connecting factor in conflicts rules. Finally, we pay attention to the so-called escape clause.