renvoi

noun

1. (countable, uncountable)A situation in which a court, tasked with deciding which state's law should apply to a case, decides to apply the law of the forum, based on the determination that a court from another involved state would also apply the law of the forum.

   “As has been shown, the renvoi, if logically carried out, involves a perpetual deadlock. But both England and America try the validity of a will of personalty by the law of the testator's last domicil.”

   “The application of renvoi in matters of personal status, family relationships and succession involves mainly conflicts between the national law and the law of the domicile, but it may also comprise a renvoi from the personal law to the lex rei sitae, notably in matters of matrimonial property and succession. This may result in a partial renvoi, e.e. when immovables forming part of a succession are situated outside the country, the law of which governs the succession as the personal law.”

   “However, it could be alternatively argued that there is a general principle at common law that renvoi does not apply in relation to what are termed “obligations” for the purposes of private international law.”

2. (countable, uncountable)Cross-reference in text; a sign that refers to something introduced earlier in a text.

   “In Jakobson's much simplified version of semiosis (1980:11, 22), a model M, a cabbage, could be said to function as a renvoi to the thing T, a king, and this referral could, by virtue of an effective similarity, be iconic (after all, as Mossis [1971:273] taught us, "Iconcity is . . . a matter of degree").”

   “The description would be inexact because it gives figure to an essential play of return (renvoi).”

   “"But since you have brought up Jakobson's formula", I continued, "let me remind you that he intended the formula to express the relation distinctive or constitutive of sign, a relation Jakobson felicitously characterized as renvoi."”

3. (countable, obsolete, uncountable)A return.

   “Touching the first promise, to make him glorius; if to suffer a neighboring Nation to demand and obtaine what they pleased of him; if to breake capitulation of peace with a great forreigne Prince by the renvoy of the Capuchins, and divers other Acts; … if this be make a rich King, then is our King made sufficiently rich.”