Rise and fall of the classic concept of private law: lessons from the legal consciousness of european private law

Abstract

Is there such a thing as European private law, a set of rules of EU law distinguished by the binary opposition public and private law? This article aims to shed light on the debate over the rise and the fall of the classic concept of private law and how the legal consciousness of the latter enhanced the legal awareness of European private law. Philosophyand sociology of law claim reasons in the search for answers, from a metaphysical and epistemological points of view.Furthermore,the reality of private law in practice put the ancient concepts in challenge by the phenomena of transnationalization of Law. Globalization, europanization, and the privatization of private Law are factual claims against the persistence of the classic concept of private law. These categories reveal the inconsistences between the theory of will in books and law in practice, suggesting that pluralism can face the lack of sense of a universal model of private law to all the realities involved in the European Union. The belief that the harmonization (or systematization) of national Civil Codes at the European level would lead to the coherence of private law is one of the basesto a final question about the extent to which the persistence of the classic concept of private law among legal scholarship is still an obstacle to the effectiveness of EU integration through the combination of public and private enforcement.