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Varieties of European Economic Law and Regulation pp 93–104Cite as

Law or Economics—Some Thoughts on Transnational Private Law

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Part of the book series: Studies in European Economic Law and Regulation ((SEELR,volume 3))

Abstract

Economization is transforming private law from within. The chapter considers the structures of economization as they encroach upon European private law’s autonomy, towards promoting critical awareness over the challenge of taming economization.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    H-W Micklitz ‘The Visible Hand of European Regulatory Private Law’ (2009) 28 Yearbook of European Law 3 (on economization); L Niglia, The Transformation of Contract in Europe (The Hague, Kluwer Law International, 2003) (on marketization).

  2. 2.

    Niglia, The Transformation.

  3. 3.

    Micklitz, ‘The Visible Hand’, 13 f.

  4. 4.

    For discussion see Niglia, The Transformation.

  5. 5.

    Micklitz, ‘The Visible Hand’.

  6. 6.

    On ‘boundaries’ cf H Lindahl, ‘A-legality: Postnationalism and the Question of Legal Boundaries’ (2010) 73 Modern Law Review 30.

  7. 7.

    L Niglia, ‘Pluralism in a New Key–Between Plurality and Normativity’ in L Niglia (ed) Pluralism and European Private Law (Oxford, Hart, 2013) 249.

  8. 8.

    H-W Micklitz, ‘Monistic Ideology versus Pluralistic Reality–Towards a Normative Design for European Private Law’ in Niglia (ed) Pluralism and European Private Law 32. See H-D Assmann, G Brüggemeier, D Hart and C Joerges, Wirtschaftsrecht als Kritik des Privatrechts (Königstein im Taunus, Athenäum, 1980).

  9. 9.

    Micklitz, ‘Monistic Ideology versus Pluralistic Reality’, 39.

  10. 10.

    Ibid, 42.

  11. 11.

    F Gomez and JJ Ganuza, ‘The Economics of Harmonising Private Law Through Optional Rules’ in L Niglia (ed) Pluralism and European Private Law 177, 180.

  12. 12.

    J Smits, ‘A Radical View of Legal Pluralism’ in L Niglia (ed) Pluralism and European Private Law 168 f., quoting and agreeing with EA O’Hara and LE Ribstein, The Law Market (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2009) (arguing that the ‘mobility of people, assets, and transactions makes deciding which laws to apply to a legal problem increasingly arbitrary’).

  13. 13.

    C von Bar and E Clive (eds) Principles, Definitions and Model Rules of European Private Law. Draft Common Frame of Reference (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2009), and the two previous editions without comments and notes: C von Bar et al (eds) Principles, Definitions and Model Rules of European Private Law: the Draft Common Frame of Reference (Munich, Sellier, 2009) 38; C von Bar et al (eds) Principles, Definitions and Model Rules of European Private Law: the Draft Common Frame of Reference (Munich, Sellier, 2008).

  14. 14.

    On such strands of economic analyses, see DCFR (outline version), at 16 and on product liability specifically, see DCFR 2009 (full edition) at 3522 (discussing the UK state of the art of the directive generated law of risk development defense and mentioning scholars favoring and criticising the minimisation cost arguments).

  15. 15.

    For critical discussion and for further illustrations see L Niglia, ‘The Question Concerning the Common Frame of Reference’ (2012) 18 European Law Journal 739.

  16. 16.

    See DCFR (outline version), at 24. See T Wilhelmsson, ‘Varieties of Welfarism in European Contract Law’ (2004) 10 European Law Journal 716 (conceptual link between, on the one hand, ‘corrective justice’ and market-facilitating contract law policy instruments such as those that I am describing in relation to the DCFR and, on the other hand, between ‘distributive justice’ and more progressive forms in which to organise contract law including internally and externally redistributive elements).

  17. 17.

    On market competitiveness as the driving ideological force behind the Commission agenda of private law reform: see, e.g. ‘Manifesto of the Study Group on Social Justice in European Private Law’ (2004) 6 European Law Journal 655–656 (discussing the ‘technocratic’ approach to contract law in the EU as one narrowly focused on removing impediments to cross-border trade with little consideration for social aspects); Wilhelmsson, ‘The Variety of Welfarism’, 726 ff. (considering the consumer contract directives to be predominantly geared towards market facilitating objectives); Niglia, The Transformation, (reconstructing the Unfair Terms Directive as instrumental to the promotion of market competitiveness); H-W Micklitz, ‘The Concept of Competitive Contract Law’ (2005) 23 Penn State International Law Review 549.

  18. 18.

    On ‘assemblage’ in relation to the Europeanisation of private law see Niglia, ‘The Question’.

  19. 19.

    See eg, for an analysis of how the insiders to the DCFR project understand the principles to be more or less ‘social’, MW Hesselink, ‘If You Don’t Like Our Principles We Have Others’ in R Brownsword, H-W Micklitz, L Niglia and S Weatherill (eds), The Foundations of European Private Law (Oxford, Hart, 2011) 59.

  20. 20.

    DCFR 2009 (full edition), 37 [Emphasis Added].

  21. 21.

    ibid, 61.

  22. 22.

    ibid, respectively, 38 ff and 59 ff. (‘The promotion of freedom overlaps with the promotion of efficiency’, at 38, thus precluding the relevance of any kind of efficiency-based interpretation that goes towards ‘limiting’ freedom).

  23. 23.

    Case C-237/02 Freiburger Kommunalbauten GmbH Baugesellschaft & Co KG v Ludger Hofstetter and Ulrike Hofstetter [2004] ECR I-3403.

  24. 24.

    Proposal for a Common European Sales Law, COM(2011) 635 final.

  25. 25.

    MW Hesselink, ‘An Optional Instrument on EU Contract Law: Could It Increase Legal Certainty and Foster Cross-Border Trade?’ European Parliament, Policy Department, PE 425.642, 16–17; J Rutgers, ‘An Optional Instrument and Social Dumping’ (2006) European Review of Contract Law 199.

  26. 26.

    I am drawing on GA Bermann, ‘Proportionality and Subsidiarity’ in C Barnard and J Scott (eds) The Law of the Single European Market. Unpacking the Premises (Oxford, Hart, 2002) 75, 80 (reconstructing the requirement of proportionality as ‘rational relation’ test). For this overall argument see L Niglia, ‘Of Jurisdictional Balancing in European Private Law’ in Brownsword et al, The Foundations of European Private Law, 309.

  27. 27.

    For discussion see L Niglia, ‘Of Constitutionality and Private Consumer Law in Europe’ (2012) Journal of European Consumer and Market Law 223.

  28. 28.

    O Lando and H Beale (eds), Principles of European Contract Law, Parts I and II (The Hague, Kluwer Law International, 2000); O Lando, E Clive, A Prum and R Zimmermann (eds), Principles of European Contract Law, Part III (The Hague, Kluwer Law International, 2003).

  29. 29.

    Cf Wilhelmsson, ‘Varieties of Welfarism’, 734 (discussing the incompatibility between a ‘general European civil code, contract code or consumer code and solutions based on the ‘varieties of welfarism’).

  30. 30.

    Cf H Eidenmüller et al, ‘The Common Frame of Reference for European Private Law—Policy Choices and Codification Problems’ (2008) 28 Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 659. Lack of ‘representativeness’ is problematic in terms of proportionality because it is about constructing a self-standing kind of private law not grounded on the practices of national jurisdictions, which prepares the ground for further fragmentation.

  31. 31.

    For discussion see D Kennedy, ‘A Transnational Genealogy of Proportionality in Private Law’ in Brownsword et al. The Foundations of European Private Law, 187; Hesselink, ‘If You Don’t Like Our Principles We Have Others’, 59.

  32. 32.

    For this opinion see e.g. European Economic and Social Committee, Opinion on the Green Paper, [2011] OJ C 84/1.

  33. 33.

    See the scholarly debate on the dangers of ‘social dumping’ as discussed above.

  34. 34.

    Niglia, ‘Pluralism in a New Key’.

  35. 35.

    L Niglia, A Critique of Codification (Oxford, Hart, 2014).

  36. 36.

    For discussion see ibid.

  37. 37.

    F Wieacker, A History of Private Law in Europe (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1995) 488.

  38. 38.

    Micklitz, ‘Monistic Ideology versus Pluralistic Reality’, 39 [Emphasis in original].

References

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for European Legal Studies, Law School, University of Exeter, Amory Building, Rennes Drive, EX4 4RJ, Exeter, UK

    Leone Niglia

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  1. Leone Niglia
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Correspondence to Leone Niglia .

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  1. Law and Governance Group, Faculty of Law, Wageningen University, Erasmus University of Rotterdam, The Netherlands

    Kai Purnhagen

  2. Faculty of Law, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark

    Peter Rott

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Niglia, L. (2014). Law or Economics—Some Thoughts on Transnational Private Law. In: Purnhagen, K., Rott, P. (eds) Varieties of European Economic Law and Regulation. Studies in European Economic Law and Regulation, vol 3. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-04903-8_5

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