renvois

Noun

renvoi (countable and uncountable, plural renvois)

1. 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.1908, Edwin Hale Abbot, Is the Renvoi a Part of the Common Law?, page 8
2. 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...1991, Myrdene Anderson, Floyd Merrell, On Semiotic Modeling, →ISBN, page 331
3. (obsolete) 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...1643, James Howell, A discourse, or parly, continued betwixt Partricius and Peregrine (upon their landing in France) touching the civill wars of England and Ireland, page 21