Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Academic Blogs -> Legal Theory Blog

Academic

: Legal Theory Blog

Smits on European Private Law & Comparative Method

By Lawrence Solum

Jan M. Smits (Tilburg University - Tilburg Institute of Comparative and Transnational Law) has posted European Private Law and the Comparative Method (THE CAMBRIDGE COMPANION TO EUROPEAN UNION PRIVATE LAW, Christian Twigg-Flessner, ed., pp. 33-43, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2010) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

European Private Law has now firmly established itself as a new field of academic study: with its own professorial chairs, academic journals, annual conferences and debate, European private law has turned into a real ?industry.? The purpose of this contribution is to examine the relationship between this field and the much older discipline of comparative law. Although it is often assumed that there is a close relationship between the two fields, it is not very clear what this relationship consists of exactly. At first sight, one is inclined to say that comparison among the 28 European jurisdictions is the essential tool for establishing a uniform private law for Europe. However, careful scrutiny of the European legislation in place and of the reasoning of the European Court of Justice may reveal a more nuanced picture. This contribution considers in particular the relationship between a) legal harmonisation and the comparative method in general; b) the role of the comparative method in European legislation; c) the role of the comparative method in the case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union; and d) the role of the comparative method in legal scholarship.It turns out that the relationship between the creation of a common private law for Europe and the comparative method is not as straightforward as is often assumed.

Full post as published by Legal Theory Blog on April 14, 2010 (boomark / email).