Interest Analysis and the Myth of Legislative Intent

Abstract

Modem conflict-of-laws scholarship is the victim of a well-intentioned misrepresentation. Proponents of "governmental interest analysis" have marketed their theory as a species of legislative interpretation, indeed as the definitive approach to construing legislative intent. But while promoted by Brainerd Currie as an antidote to the pernicious metaphysical assumptions that afflicted Beale and the First Restatement, interest analysis is in fact nothing of the kind. Interest analysis merely substitutes one set of metaphysical premises for another, leaving the body of conflicts law with a remedy every bit as distressing as the disease it was designed to cure.