While the internationalisation of society has stimulated the emergence of common legal frameworks to coordinate transnational social relations, private law itself is firmly rooted in national law. European integration processes have altered this state of affairs to a limited degree with a few, albeit groundbreaking, interventions that have tended to engender resistance from various actors within European nation-states. Against that background, this book takes as its point of departure the need to understand the process of legal denationalisation within broader political frameworks. In particular it seeks to make sense of opposition to Europeanisation at this point in the evolution of European law when, despite growing nationalist attitudes, great efforts have been made to produce comprehensive legal instruments to synthesise general contract law - an area that has traditionally been solely within the ambit of nation-states. Combining insights from the disciplines of law, history and political science, the book investigates the conceptual and cultural associations between law and the nation-state, examines the impact of nationalist ideas in modern legal thought and reveals the nationalist underpinnings of some of the arguments employed against and, somewhat paradoxically, even in support of legal Europeanisation. The author's research for this book has been supported by the Hague Institute for the Internationalisation of Law.

Comprehensive and accessible, this book offers a concise synthesis of the evolution of the law in Western Europe, from ancient Rome to the beginning of the twentieth century. It situates law in the wider framework of Europe’s political, economic, social and cultural developments.

European private law has hitherto tended to be conceptualised firmly around ideas of unity and harmony. Yet the discourse within other areas of European law, notably constitutional law scholarship, visibly adopts pluralist perspectives. This book seeks to bridge the gap between 'public' and 'private' law by looking at European private law from various pluralist positions and by investigating old and new ways in which to understand legal pluralism in general. It fills a gap in the wide literature on legal pluralism, as the first book entirely dedicated to offering an insight into legal pluralism from the vantage point of the private law domain. The book addresses critically issues such as what pluralism really means in private law and what conceptions of pluralism it embodies, including discussion about the outer boundaries of any of the pluralist understandings. Contributions address comparative, critical, historical, theoretical and normative aspects. The book provides an opportunity to engage innovatively with problematic conceptual issues which inform the work of European private law scholars, including the debate on the Common Frame of Reference Poject of the European Commision.

This title explores the normative foundations of European contract law. It addresses fundamental political questions on contract law in Europe from the perspective of leading contemporary political theories. Does the law of contract need a democratic basis? To what extent should it be Europeanised? What justifies the binding force of contract and the main remedies for breach? When should weaker parties be protected? Should market transactions be considered legally void when they are immoral? Which rules of contract law should the parties be free to opt out of? Adopting a critical lens, this book interrogates utilitarian, liberal-egalitarian, libertarian, communitarian, civic republican, and discourse-theoretical political philosophies and analyses the answers they provide to these questions. It also situates these theoretical debates within the context of the political landscape of European contract law and the divergent views expressed by lawmakers, legal academics, and other stakeholders. This work moves beyond the acquis positivism, market reductionism, and private law essentialism that tend to dominate these conversations and foregrounds normative complexity. It explores the principles and values behind various arguments used in the debates on European contract law and its future to highlight the normative stakes involved in the practical question of what we, as a society, should do about contract law in Europe. In so doing, it opens up democratic space for the consideration of alternative futures for contract law in the European Union, and for better justifications for those parts of the EU contract law acquis we wish to retain.

Authors from 13 countries come together in this edited volume, Common Law and Civil Law Today: Convergence and Divergence, to present different aspects of the relationship and intersections between common and civil law. Approaching the relationship between common and civil law from different perspectives and from different fields of law, this book offers an intriguing insight into the similarities, differences and connections between these two major legal traditions. This volume is divided into 3 parts and consists of 22 articles. The first part discusses the common law/civil law dichotomy in the international legal systems and theory. The second focuses on case-law and arbitration, while the third part analyses elements of common and civil law in various legal systems. By offering such a variety of approaches and voices, this book allows the reader to gain an invaluable insight into the historical, comparative and theoretical contexts of this legal dichotomy. From its carefully selected authors to its comprehensive collection of articles, this edited volume is an essential resource for students, researchers and practitioners working or studying within both legal systems.

This book brings together leading scholars and practitioners, to explore contemporary challenges in the field of European private law, identify problems, and propose solutions. The first section reassesses the existing theoretical framework and traditional legal scholarship on which European private law has developed. The book then goes on to examine important and practical topics of geo-blocking and standardisation in the context of recent legislative developments and the CJEU case law. The third section assesses the challenging subject of adequate regulation of online platforms and sharing economy that has been continuously addressed in the recent years by European private law. A fourth section deals with the regulatory challenges brought by an increasing development of artificial intelligence and blockchain technology and the question of liability. The final section examines recent European legislative developments in the area of digital goods and digital content and identifies potential future policy directions in which the European private law may develop in the future.

Exploring the advantages and disadvantages of codifying contract law, this book considers the question from the perspectives of both civil and common law systems, referring in detail to issues of international and consumer law. With contributions from leading international scholars, the chapters present a range of opinions on the virtues of codification, encouraging further debate on this topic. The book commences with a discussion on the internationalization imperative for codification of contract law. It then turns to regional issues, exploring first codification attempts in the European Union and Japan, and then issues relevant to codification in the common law jurisdictions of Australia, New Zealand and the United States. The collection concludes with two chapters which consider the need to draw upon both private and comparative international law perspectives to inform any codification reforms. This book will be of interest to international and comparative contract law academics, as well as regulators and policy-makers.