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This Article reviews the most recent case law on this issue and examines the results of those cases in the light of existing principles of comity and of the newly promulgated Restatement of Foreign Relations Law of the United States (Revised). The analysis focuses on three important appellate court decisions, all of which are or have been before the United States Supreme Court, and examines the contents and origins of the United States Government's position on these issues as found in amicus briefs submitted in these cases. The article concludes with an evaluation of the dilemma evidenced by the need to give Hague Evidence Convention member-states the greatest possible access to foreign-situs evidence while maintaining the mutual respect for conflicting national interests that is essential to an effective system for international cooperation.

Historically, public international law and private international law have been treated as two different legal systems that function more or less independently. Public international law regulates activity among human beings operating in groups called, nation-states, while private international law regulates the activities of smaller subgroups or of individuals as they interact with each other. Since the public international legal system coordinates the interaction of collective human interests through decentralized mechanisms and private international law coordinates the interaction of individual or subgroup interests primarily through centralized mechanisms, these coordinating functions are usually carried out in different forums, each appropriate to the task. The differences between the processes by which sanctions for violation of community norms are applied in the two systems and the differences in the nature of the units making up the communities that establish those norms tend to obscure the fact that both the public and the private international systems coordinate human behavior, and that thus the values that inform both systems must necessarily be the same.

On October 24, 1980, a symposium entitled "Transnational Technology Transfer: Current Problems and Solutions for the Corporate Practitioner" was held at Vanderbilt Law School. The symposium was a regional meeting of the American Society of International Law (ASIL) co-sponsored by the Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law and the Vanderbilt International Law Society under the auspices of the law school's Transnational Legal Studies Program. This writer served as organizer for the ASIL. Mr. Kevin Tyra, a third-year law student, was Symposium Chairman. Persons in attendance at the symposium were individuals active in private practice, government, and the academic field. During the one-day session, seven speakers discussed various legal, economic, and political issues related to transnational transfer of technology. Those presentations follow.

As is peculiarly appropriate for any conference dealing with a rapidly developing and constantly changing area of international economic activity, both the speakers and the participants at this meeting raised more questions than were answered. A principal theme, illustrated by the papers reproduced here, was the need for careful consideration of the problem--legal and commercial-- involved in international lending on the basis of specific information concerning its effect, its promise and the needs involved. Generalizations concerning activities in developing countries are increasingly ineffective as guides to government or business policy or academic inquiry. Recent events in the Middle East confirm the rise of some segments of the Third World to positions of unprecedented economic power with which the developed world must deal. Of particular importance was the evidence presented at the conference of the need for careful consideration of new organizational forms, both public and private, to permit the effective interchange of capital, raw materials, and goods and services in a manner in which mutual benefit can be perceived by both developed and developing states. At a time when the developed world depends, to an ever greater degree, for supplies of basic raw materials, upon exports from the developing countries and when those countries give voice and action to a rapidly growing desire to enter the twentieth century during the twentieth century, consideration of these questions by the commercial, legal and academic communities must take a high priority. It is hoped that this symposium will contribute to that development.

Professors Cheatham and Maier raise the question, "What are the sources of the law applied in private international cases?" The authors consider this question under two main headings. The first deals with the "authoritative sources" of private international law applied in United States courts. It considers the question, Where, within the complex governmental structure of the United States, does power over private international matters rest?" Several possible sources are considered: public international law, state law, and federal law, and within federal law, the major components: international agreements, legislation, federal common law and executive law. The second part of the article deals briefly with the "fundamental sources" of private international law. Here, the authors seek to identify those basic policies which guide a law-making body in laying down and developing principles of private international law. In the process, they suggest a number of "threats" to the development of effective private international rules.