The students, colleagues and friends of Paul Lagarde are happy to offer him these Mélanges, which present a comprehensive overview of contemporary private international law. Throughout more than four decades, Paul Lagarde’s academic career has made him one of the masters of private international law, not only French but worldwide and especially European, as evidenced by his important contribution to the drafting of the Rome Convention of 1980 on the law applicable to contractual obligations, and of several international conventions negotiated in particular at the Hague Conference. He has led the work of more than 50 law doctors, some 30 of whom are today, at the French university or abroad, professors or lecturers and are continuing his work in doctrinal practice. Freed from the constraints of academic life, its always intense scientific activity applies in the direction of the prestigious Review Critical of Private International Law and in the duties of Secretary-General of the International Commission on Civil Status. Since none of the chapters of the discipline escapes the observation, reflection or teaching of the offender, this compendium, by bringing together studies of a wide variety of subjects and style, discovers the breadth and fertility of a thought at the same time as it prioritises certain preferred themes expressing the most topical relevance of private international law, such as the concepts of proximity and public order, the implications and requirements of European integration and the development of conventional law and their most innovative methodological implications.