Public Order Clause in International Civil Procedure

The paper is devoted to considering the mechanism and scope of the public order exception as a ground for refusal to recognize and enforce foreign judgements and arbitral awards. The author analyzes the legal nature of the public order exception and deals with the issue of uncertainty in the elements that might be regarded as a content of this defensive clause. Having acknowledged the necessity of a stricter approach to the interpretation of this institute the author describes the main approaches and criteria developed in the doctrinal studies on private international law and aimed at unification of the application of the public order defense. For the purposes of the mentioned study, the author examines the Russian and foreign case law on effect of the public order exception within international civil procedure. Based on the conducted analysis the author states that the range of situations when the application of the public order defense deems allowed is similar both in Russia and abroad. However, the case law still provides for a lot of examples demonstrating a lack of the systematic approaches to the application of this institute.