Letters rogatory or letters of request are a formal request from a court to a foreign court for some type of judicial assistance. The most common remedies sought by letters rogatory are service of process and taking of evidence.
One reason why a court may require assistance from a foreign court is to obtain evidence from a witness. This evidence may be to answer questions relevant to the determination of an issue of fact, or for disclosure of documents.
Courts usually have the power to subpoena witnesses only from within the jurisdiction of their own legislature unless they are aided by foreign judicial, or sometimes legislative, authority. For example, Alice in the United States, could not summon Jean from France to the US courthouse. Instead, the US court would issue a letter rogatory to a French court, which would then examine Jean in France, and send a deposition back to the requesting court.
Insofar as requests to US courts are concerned, the use of letters rogatory for requesting the taking of evidence has been replaced in large part by applications under 28 USC 1782, or Section 1782 Discovery.
In many cases, the witness is willing to provide the testimony. However, the target court may compel the testimony of a witness who is unwilling to appear.
In the past, letters rogatory could not usually be transmitted directly between the applicable courts, and they had to be transmitted via consular or diplomatic channels, which could make the whole process very slow. There have been various international conventions in regard to service of process and taking of evidence.
One of the earliest conventions to simplify the procedure of letters rogatory was the 1905 Civil Procedure Convention, signed at The Hague. Drafted only in French, it was ratified by only 22 countries. Later conventions, created after the institution of the Hague Conference on Private International Law, which was drafted in both English and French, commanded more support.
The Hague Service Convention, ratified in 1965, enabled designated authorities in each of the signatory states to transmit documents for service to each other, bypassing the diplomatic route. This convention has been ratified by 60 states, including the United Kingdom and the United States, neither of which had ratified the 1905 convention. The Hague Evidence Convention, ratified in 1970, formalised procedures for taking of evidence. It has been ratified by 43 states. For situations exclusively among member states of the European Union, two regulations (1348/2000 and 1206/2001) superseded the two Hague Conventions. The two regulations apply to each of the member states of the European Union with the exception of Denmark, which has opted out.
A deposition in the law of the United States, or examination for discovery in the law of Canada, involves the taking of sworn, out-of-court oral testimony of a witness that may be reduced to a written transcript for later use in court or for discovery purposes. Depositions are commonly used in litigation in the United States and Canada. They are almost always conducted outside court by the lawyers themselves, with no judge present to supervise the examination.
In an extradition, one jurisdiction delivers a person accused or convicted of committing a crime in another jurisdiction, over to the other's law enforcement. It is a cooperative law enforcement procedure between the two jurisdictions and depends on the arrangements made between them. In addition to legal aspects of the process, extradition also involves the physical transfer of custody of the person being extradited to the legal authority of the requesting jurisdiction.
In the U.S. legal system, service of process is the procedure by which a party to a lawsuit gives an appropriate notice of initial legal action to another party, court, or administrative body in an effort to exercise jurisdiction over that person so as to force that person to respond to the proceeding before the court, body, or other tribunal.
Discovery, in the law of common law jurisdictions, is a pre-trial procedure in a lawsuit in which each party, through the law of civil procedure, can obtain evidence from the other party or parties by means of discovery devices such as interrogatories, requests for production of documents, requests for admissions and depositions. Discovery can be obtained from non-parties using subpoenas. When a discovery request is objected to, the requesting party may seek the assistance of the court by filing a motion to compel discovery.
The Convention of 5 October 1961 Abolishing the Requirement of Legalisation for Foreign Public Documents, also known as the Apostille Convention, is an international treaty drafted by the Hague Conference on Private International Law (HCCH). The Apostille Convention is intended to simplify the procedure through which a document, issued in one of the contracting states, can be certified for legal purposes in the other contracting states of the Convention. A certification under the Convention is called an apostille or Hague apostille. An apostille is an international certification comparable to a notarisation, and may supplement a local notarisation of the document. If the Convention applies between two states, an apostille issued by the state of origin is sufficient to certify the document, and removes the need for further certification by the destination state.
Forum non conveniens (FNC) is a mostly common law legal doctrine through which a court acknowledges that another forum or court where the case might have been brought is a more appropriate venue for a legal case, and transfers the case to such a forum. A change of venue might be ordered, for example, to transfer a case to a jurisdiction within which an accident or incident underlying the litigation occurred and where all the witnesses reside.
The Hague Conference on Private International Law (HCCH) is an intergovernmental organisation in the area of private international law, that administers several international conventions, protocols and soft law instruments.
A mutual legal assistance treaty (MLAT) is an agreement between two or more countries for the purpose of gathering and exchanging information in an effort to enforce public or criminal laws. A mutual legal assistance request is commonly used to formally interrogate a suspect in a criminal case, when the suspect resides in a foreign country.
The Convention on the Service Abroad of Judicial and Extrajudicial Documents in Civil or Commercial Matters, more commonly called the Hague Service Convention, is a multilateral treaty that was adopted in The Hague, The Netherlands, on 15 November 1965 by member states of the Hague Conference on Private International Law. It came into existence to give litigants a reliable and efficient means of serving the documents on parties living, operating or based in another country. The provisions of the convention apply to service of process in civil and commercial matters but not criminal matters. Also, Article 1 states that the Convention shall not apply if the address of the person to be served with the document is not known.
The Convention on the Taking of Evidence Abroad in Civil or Commercial Matters—more commonly referred to as the Hague Evidence Convention—is a multilateral treaty which was drafted under the auspices of the Hague Conference on Private International Law (HCPIL). The treaty was negotiated in 1967 and 1968 and signed in The Hague on 18 March 1970. It entered into force in 1972. It allows transmission of letters of request from one signatory state to another signatory state without recourse to consular and diplomatic channels. Inside the US, obtaining evidence under the Evidence Convention can be compared to comity.
The Service Regulation, officially the Council Regulation (EC) No. 1393/2007 on the service in the Member States of judicial and extrajudicial documents in civil or commercial matters, is a European Union regulation in the field of judicial cooperation. It allows service of judicial documents from one member state to another without recourse to consular and diplomatic channels.
Council Regulation (EC) No. 1206/2001 of 28 May 2001 on cooperation between the courts of the Member States in the taking of evidence in civil or commercial matters is a European Union regulation in the field of judicial cooperation. It allows taking of evidence from one member state to another without recourse to consular and diplomatic channels. The regulation applies to all the member states of the European Union with the exception of Denmark. The 2015 Danish European Union opt-out referendum, which would have opted-in, was rejected by the people of Denmark.
Transnational crimes are crimes that have actual or potential effect across national borders and crimes that are intrastate but offend fundamental values of the international community. The term is commonly used in the law enforcement and academic communities. Transnational organized crime (TOC) refers specifically to transnational crime carried out by crime organizations.
Section 1782 of Title 28 of the United States Code is a federal statute that allows a litigant (party) to a legal proceeding outside the United States to apply to an American court to obtain evidence for use in the non-US proceeding, a process known as discovery. The full name of Section 1782 is "Assistance to foreign and international tribunals and to litigants before such tribunals".
International litigation, sometimes called transnational litigation, is the practice of litigation in connection with disputes among businesses or individuals residing or based in different countries.
International asset recovery is any effort by governments to repatriate the proceeds of corruption hidden in foreign jurisdictions. Such assets may include monies in bank accounts, real estate, vehicles, arts and artifacts, and precious metals. As defined under the United Nations Convention against Corruption, asset recovery refers to recovering the proceeds of corruption, rather than broader terms such as asset confiscation or asset forfeiture which refer to recovering the proceeds or instrumentalities of crime in general.
Mexico is amongst the world's most popular sources and destinations for international child abduction while also being widely regarded as having one of the least effective systems of protecting and returning internationally abducted children within its borders.
As a result of its high level of immigration and emigration and its status as common source and destination for a large amount of international travel the United States has more incoming and outgoing international child abductions per year than any other country. To address this issue the United States played an active role in the drafting of the 1980 Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction Although the United States was one of the first nations to sign the Convention in 1981 the Convention did not enter into force for the US until 1988 with the enactment by Congress of the International Child Abduction Remedies Act which translated the Convention into US law.
The Hague Convention on the International Recovery of Child Support and Other Forms of Family Maintenance, also referred to as the Hague Maintenance Convention or the Hague Child Support Convention is a multilateral treaty governing the enforcement of judicial decisions regarding child support extraterritorially. It is one of a number of conventions in the area of private international law of the Hague Conference on Private International Law in 2007. The convention is open to all states as well as to Regional Economic Integration Organizations as long as they are composed of sovereign states only and have sovereignty in the content of the convention. The convention entered into force on 1 January 2013 between Norway and Albania, with Bosnia-Herzegovina (2013), Ukraine (2013), the European Union, Montenegro (2017), United States (2017), Turkey (2017), Kazakhstan (2017), Brazil (2017), Honduras (2017), Belarus (2018), Guyana (2020), Nicaragua (2020), United Kingdom (2021), Serbia (2021), New Zealand (2021), Ecuador (2022), Botswana (2022) and Azerbaijan (2023) following suit. Because the EU acceptance of the convention applies in 27 EU countries, the convention applies in 45 countries worldwide.
The European Convention on Mutual Assistance in Criminal Matters is a 1959 Council of Europe mutual legal assistance treaty. It has been ratified by 50 states including all 46 member states of the Council of Europe.
