Abstract
The article deals with a review of application of foreign law in a proceeding before the supreme instances in four legal orders. It compares the regimes in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and the beginnings of the court practice in this field in the Czech Republic.
It comes to the conclusion, that in Austria and Switzerland the application of foreign law underlies proceedings of review by the supreme court, whilst in Germany one distinguishes between ascertainment out of foreign law and application foreign law. The cases in the first category are reviewed by supreme courts, but the Supreme Court of Germany is unwilling to do with regard to application of foreign law based on the argument that this would interfere with the exclusive competence of the foreign supreme court instance.
This is not a model for the Czech Supreme Court, since it outlaws one of the appeals and doesn't meet one principle of the private international law, namely the equality of the legal orders. The logical conclusion is that application of foreign law should be in the same regime of review as the local law.
The ascertainment of the foreign law and its application are only two faces of one process and in the praxis this faces can not be separated.