This volume contains thoughts on the issue of Codification of European Private Law and on the present state of European Private Law by one of the protagonists of the debate that is unfolding in Europe. Taking a sometimes sharply critical view, Professor Mattei attempts to unveil what he considers biases, strategies, and ideologies that affect the European legal process. The work attempts to open a basic and genuine political debate between legal scholars, which he considers an unavoidable prerequisite of any major reform process in private law. Challenging the claim of technocratic neutrality shared by much of the most influential European legal academy, the author uses the tools of Comparative Law and Economics to set priorities on the table and to show some of the real stakes of the present process. The work explores fundamental areas of European private law, from the sources' to contracts' to trust law.

In this volume, the Study Group and the Acquis Group present the first academic Draft of a Common Frame of Reference (DCFR). The Draft is based in part on a revised version of the Principles of European Contract Law (PECL) and contains Principles, Definitions and Model Rules of European Private Law in an interim outline edition. It covers the books on contracts and other juridical acts, obligations and corresponding rights, certain specific contracts, and non-contractual obligations. One purpose of the text is to provide material for a possible "political" Common Frame of Reference (CFR) which was called for by the European Commission's Action Plan on a More Coherent European Contract Law of January 2003.

The Unidroit Principles of International Contracts, first published in 1994, have met with extraordinary success in the legal and business community worldwide. Prepared by a group of eminent experts from all major legal systems of the world, they provide a comprehensive set of rules for international commercial contracts. This new edition of An International Restatement of Contract Law is the first comprehensive introduction to the Unidroit Principles 2004. In addition, it provides an extensive survey and analysis of the actual use of the Unidroit Principles in practice with special emphasis on the different ways in which they have been interpreted and applied by the courts and arbitral tribunals in the hundred or so cases reported worldwide. The book also contains the full text of the Preamble and the 180 articles of the Unidroit Principles 2004 in Chinese, English, French, German, Italian and Russian as well as the 1994 edition in Spanish.

The book delves into the 'deeper structures' of the world's legal systems, where law meets culture, politics and socio-economic factors.

Since fall 2006: a new, revised edition of Unidroit Principles in Practice, featuring approximately 120-130 cases. The UNIDROIT Principles of International Commercial Contacts, published in 1994, were an entirely new approach to international contract law. Prepared by a group of eminent experts from around the world as a “restatement” of international commercial contract law, the Principles are not a binding instrument but are referred to in many legal matters. They are widely recognized now as a balanced set of rules designed for use throughout the world irrespective of the legal traditions and the economic and political conditions of the countries in which they are applied.

This book contains a case-based assessment of the Draft Common Frame of Reference carried out by the Common Core Evaluating Group, which gathers a number of well-established and younger scholars coming from Eastern and Western countries of the European Union using the working method of the research project "The Common Core of European Private Law" (www.common-core.org). The aim of the assessment is to test how the Draft Common Frame of Reference could work when applied in different national legal systems. To this end, a number of factual situations, i.e. hypothetical cases, have been drafted by the authors and solved through the application of both national rules and rules of the DCFR. Thereby, similarities and differences in the outcome of the cases have been analysed, together with difficulties - if any - in the application of the "Principles of European Law". The Common Core assessment has been carried out as part of the "Joint Network of European Private Law" Project (CoPECL), financed by the EU Commission.