Game of Foreign Judgment Recognition

This article provides an economic analysis of "comity" and "reciprocity" in foreign judgment recognition system. Comity is not a moral concept but a legal theoretical concept derived from the perspectives of global efficiency and international institutional compatibility. Comity embodied in the institution of foreign judgment recognition is justified as an attempt to minimize the international transaction costs or to maximize the global wealth. However, as a rational individual maximizes his own utility, a rational country maximizes its own wealth, not global wealth. In this regard, even rational countries may be faced with the Prisoner's dilemma depending on the relative amount of the transaction costs arising from non-recognition. However, according to the lessons of the frepeated Prisoner's dilemma games, and if the countries are treated as rational game players, there can be a stable and reasonable equilibrium in the long run, even without the reciprocity. It should be noted that threatening the foreign countries with "reciprocity," ignoring their inevitable limits of international institutional compatibility in the foreign judgment recognition, would be very similar to "answering a fool according to his folly."