Declarative tracing or backwards tracing—a welcomed development or a misnomer

In Federal Republic of Brazil v Durant International Corpn [2016], the Privy Council upheld the long-disputed concept of backwards tracing. This article argues in favour of the establishment of backwards tracing and attempts to clarify several confusions arising in the development of backwards tracing, in particular those terminological difficulties. Deriving from the clarification effort, it is advocated that the orthodox tracing process can be interpreted from an additional perspective, based on the ‘negative option’ obtained (but often neglected) by a tracer. Accordingly, it is time to rename backwards tracing as ‘Declarative Tracing’.