Codification Of Private Law Research Articles

La codificación del derecho privado (derecho civil y derecho comercial) en Hungría y el nuevo Código Civil húngaro del 2013

El presente estudio pretende ofrecer un panorama sobre las diversas etapas de la codificación del Derecho privado (Derecho civil y Derecho comercial) en Hungría, así como de las características del (segundo) Código Civil Húngaro del 2013.

Otto von Gierke o sporze między nurtami germańskim i romańskim w niemieckiej historycznej szkole prawa

Celem artykułu jest prezentacja fenomenu niemieckiej szkoły historycznej, widzianej oczyma niemieckiego historyka i teoretyka prawa profesora Ottona von Gierke. Jest to perspektywa o tyle ciekawa, iż berliński profesor był uczestnikiem komentowanych wydarzeń (w schyłkowej ich fazie), co jednak w niewielkiej tylko mierze rzutowało na obiektywizm czynionych ocen. Co więcej, świeżość i prawie bezpośredniość relacji niemieckiego myśliciela jest bardzo cenną wartością. Autor artykułu omawia genezę i ewolucję szkoły będącej w istocie kontaminacją dwóch nurtów refleksji prawniczej: romanizmu i germanizmu. W różnych okresach owe kierunki albo pozostawały ze sobą w symbiozie, albo (najczęściej) namiętnie się zwalczały, niwecząc prymarną jedność Historische Rechtsschule. Obydwa odegrały bardzo ważną rolę w dziejach niemieckiej refleksji prawniczej. Ostateczny kształt centralnej kodyfikacji niemieckiego prawa prywatnego, jakim był BGB, to właśnie owoc ścierania się koncepcji sformułowanych w łonie tej szkoły. Poniższy artykuł jest relacją zarówno z tamtych zaszłości, jak i podsumowaniem stanu badań nad Gierkem i szkołą historyczną w nauce polskiej.

Remarks Regarding the Influence of European Legislation upon Codification of Civil Law

This paper emphasises that Europeanisation of law contributes greatly to the phenomenon of decodification. The impact of European legislation on the position of the civil code as the main source of private law is clearly visible in the case of directly effective regulations. Also, implementation of directives can (and often does) lead to the creation of legislation regulating civil law matters, yet separate from the civil code. The Polish experience with implementation of directives concerning consumers protection makes for a good example. Regulation of timeshare contracts completely outside the civil code is – according to the Polish doctrine – a result of difficulties with integrating this particular provision into the codification of private law. If such difficulties are inevitable, so is also progressing decodification of civil law due to its advancing harmonization on the European level.

The Social Role of Private Law

'The Social Role of Private Law' was a public lecture given by Otto von Gierke in 1889 as a leading critique of the codification of private law in the German Civil Code. Although highly influential in German legal theory and history, this is the first English translation of Gierke's work. The English translation is given in parallel to the original German, and is preceded by an introductory essay, 'Social Law and Social Justice'. Over 120 years after Gierke's original lecture, the concept of 'social law' is developing a rival taxonomy to overtake the increasingly problematic public-private divide, including the subcategories of obligations, property and persons. On foundations laid by Gierke and contemporaries such as F. W. Maitland or O. W. Holmes, the theory of social law has become increasingly well understood. This has been seen through realist jurisprudence, the embracing of functional analysis, and dedicated legal journals. Today, the idea of social law sees the need for all human institutions, in a democratic society, to be founded on the pursuit of social justice.

The Future of Legal History: Roman Law

Being faced with the task of writing an essay on the future of one’s own subject is both a tremendous opportunity and an outrageous risk: an opportunity, because one has to render an account of the current state of research as well as its capacities for future development. One might even be able to caution the community about possible aberrations or meanders. However, this creative power has to be weighed against the risk that one’s obviously subjective assessments might be rejected. This danger is particularly great if one strives to present a finely nuanced and sophisticated view, as one always runs the risk of getting caught between two stools. Nevertheless, scientific progress hinges on dissent and on a passionate, insatiable thirst for knowledge. The following brief considerations should hence serve as a thought-provoking impulse as well as a subjective snapshot of the inner workings of the discipline of ‘Roman law’, which generally considers itself as a sub-discipline of legal history, at least in the context of university structures. Any suggestions that might help stop gaps, mend errors, or even provide alternatives to the observations given here, are therefore warmly welcome. Asking about the future inevitably raises the question about the past and its influence on the current state of the discipline. To begin with, a couple of observations on the tradition of Roman law in Europe and in the Anglo-American world are therefore in order. In Europe, the study of Roman law has a longstanding tradition as an analysis of the legal foundations of one’s own codification of private law. On the one hand, this tradition led to the fact that Roman law never migrated into the philosophy faculties but rather remained a genuine subject of legal education. On the other hand, the connection between Roman law and modern private …

Ideias em outro lugar? Constituição liberal e codificação do direito privado na virada do século XIX para o século XX no Brasil

Based on assumptions of systems theory in a critical perspective, this paper analyzes the relationship between social structure and semantics in the Brazilian State at the turn of nineteenth century, specifically considering the issues of liberal constitutionalism and codification of private law. First, the author seeks to depart from the model of “interpreters of Brazil” in order to characterize the Brazilian State as a territorial political-legal organization within the modern society as world society. In the second section, the author discusses the difficulties in adopting a civil code during the Brazilian Empire. In this regard, he points to the difficulty of liberal legal ideas under non-liberal local socioeconomic structures. In the third part of the article, the author deals with the conditions of emergence of the 1891 Constitution, emphasizing the shift of meaning and function of the liberal legal-political ideas in the context of the Brazilian State of the “First Republic”. He then addresses the conditions of emergence and the practical meaning of the Civil Code of 1916, considering again the displacement of liberal legal ideas in the context of the Brazilian state. Finally, the author takes distance from the notion of “misplaced ideas” to complete with the paradoxical formulation that liberal ideas, in that context, acted as both ideas in another place (society in the scope of the Brazilian State) and in the same place (the world society).

Private Law Codification, Modernization and Nationalism: A View from Critical Legal History

Private law codification is not as indispensable to continental legal culture as standard legal histories would have us believe. Law was modernizing roughly at the same time, and in the same way, in Western countries that did not codify private law, including the common law world and Scandinavia. This suggests a connection between the legal history of regions with and without codification; in this exercise in critical legal history, I argue that the engine driving the modernization of Western law has been legal scholarship, not legislators and their codes. Moreover, the idea of a European civil code may struggle today at least partly because the civil code never had the monopoly over European legal development standard legal histories have assigned to it. The article thus illustrates the relationship between comparative legal history and critical legal history; critical legal history may not be comparative by definition, but it almost always is comparative in fact, at least in the broad sense of comparative legal history exemplified here.

Some Realism about a Common European Sales Law

In 2011 the European Commission came with a draft Regulation for a law covering (the largely contractual aspects of) sales of moveable assets within the EU (CESL). It is meant for cross-border sales to consumers but may also be used by professionals for cross border sales amongst themselves as long as one party is an SME. It is intended as an opt-in instrument. The present draft is a carve out from the Draft Common Frame on Reference (DCFR) earlier presented informally as a text for a codification of private law within the EU. CESL may well be seen as a first step in its adoptation. It raises first the issue of practical need and of the quality of the proposal as a response. A closely related question is whether the EU has sufficient formal authority to legislate in this field in which connection the project poses the further question whether traditional codification thinking in the civil law mould remains the proper way forward and whether statists initiatives of this nature that seek to monopolise the field and subjugate all other sources of law are the most appropriate method of law formation in international business dealings. These matters were never properly considered but affect fundamentally the credibility and prospects of CESL.

Autonomy of Common European Sales Law in Lithuania

Sį dokumentą lietuvių kalba galima rasti adresu: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2243074 Private law is the area of law in which the resistance to unification in Europe is probably the strongest. Private law codification initiative, which began in 1989, after more than twenty years was recently reduced to optional non binding common sales law draft, which is gradually making its way through the EU institutions’ legislative process. Choice of EU regulation as a form indicates that the willingness to reach objective results is strong enough, but the reasoning in support of this project faces equally strong argument against it. Lithuanian experience expands this discussion in several important respects. Rome I Regulation Article 6.2. deadlock solution is specifically beneficial for smaller countries, where market participants have less bargaining power. In addition, an optional supplementary regulatory framework that the parties could choose, would allow testing existing legal systems by competition. Lithuania's recent reform experience suggests that the draft regulation provides for a smooth change in Europe. Multilingualism, some of the Common European Sales Law solutions, radically different from the Lithuanian national legal provisions will certainly require revision of the existing concepts, but that is not a reason not to try to improve the EU's common private law.

Development and Codification of Private Law in Portugal

The present short paper offers a referenced outline of the development and codification of private law in the history of Portugal from the Middle Ages to the latter half of the 20th century.

‘Where Angels Fear to Tread’: The EU Law of Remedies and Codification of European Private Law

The article considers the impact of codification of European Private Law on the EU law of remedies. It discusses the ‘culture’ of the existing remedial arrangement in the EU and highlights its main advantages, such as its organic, nuanced and diversified character. It then considers the features and effects of codification and discusses how the operation of the EU law of remedies might be affected by a European codification of such branches of private law as contractual liability, non-contractual liability and unjust enrichment. As for the content of the codified rules, the article looks at the Draft Common Frame of Reference (the DCFR) as the most prominent of the European Private Law codification documents and contrasts the rules proposed in this document and the existing structure of the EU law of remedies. It incorporates in its analysis the recent proposal for Regulation on a Common European Sales Law and explains why its impact on the existing EU law of remedies will be very limited. The article then examines the general threats posed by codifying the law of remedies, in particular the threat of imploding the existing limits of the effectiveness of EU norms in national courts. It argues that any codification proposal should above all be sensitive to the constitutional and institutional arrangement of the EU legal system and respect the division of competences between the Court of Justice and national courts.

Civil Law in the Czech Republic: The Draft Version of the Civil Code and Consumer Protection

Abstract: For a long time, work has been in progress in the Czech Republic on a new draft of the Civil Code, which is meant to be a modern codification of private law. The current Civil Code is from 1964, and, despite its 1991 amendments that brought it into harmony with democratic legal principles (the original code was a product of a socialist legislature that, among other things, subdued such institutes as private ownership, autonomy of will, and so forth), it is not up to date. Not only does it still preserve its socialist past, but also, its frequent amendments also turned it into a non-systematic codification of highly disparate elements. In addition, numerous obligations are regulated by the Commercial Code, which causes serious problems with its legal interpretation and brings uncertainty into civil law relations. The drafters of the new Civil Code have reverted back to the original tradition Allgemeines Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch (ABGB), Code Civil, and the 1937 Civil Code draft), without, however, taking into consideration some modern trends in civil law, namely, consumer protection and tendencies towards the unification of law. The article focuses on the issue of consumer protection in the draft proposal of the Civil Code, reflecting on the most contested issues of the legal regulation of consumer protection. In particular, it reacts to the change in the concept of the consumer, the lowering of the standard of consumer protection in the case of the sale of goods in shops, and the insensitive appropriation of terminology from EC law into the Czech legal order, which often happens without regard to the institutes of Czech private law, mainly the law of obligations. Résumé: En République Tchèque, on travaille depuis un certain temps sur l’élaboration d’un nouveau Code civi,l qui devra être un code moderne de droit privé. Le Code civil actuellement en vigueur date de 1964 et bien qu’il ait été amendé en 1991 afin de répondre aux principes juridiques démocratiques (le code primitif était le fruit de la législation communiste qui par exemple supprimait la propriété privée ou l’autonomie de la volonté etc.), il n’a pas su se débarrasser de son passé totalitaire et vu le nombre élevé d’amendements partiels, l’ensemble est peu systématique et hétérogène. Beaucoup d’obligations sont en plus réglées par le Code du commerce ce qui engendre maints problèmes d’interprétation, tout en jetant une insécurité juridique dans les rapports de droit privé. Les auteurs du nouveau projet du Code civil renouent avec la tradition première (ABGB, Code civil et projet du Code civil de 1937), mais ils se montrent négligents vis-àvis des trendances modernes de la théorie actuelle de droit civil, surtout de la protection du consommateur et des tendances d’unification. Or le présent article étudie les droits des consommateurs dans le projet du Code civil et cherche à réagir aux questions les plus délicates concernant la législation liée à la protection du consommateur dans le code préparé. Il réflète surtout le changement de la conception du consommateur, la baisse des standards de la protection du consommateur lors de la vente dans le magasin, aussi bien qu’une adoption peu a

Die römischrechtliche Tradition und die Privatrechtsentwicklung in Ungarn

In the first part of his paper the author is dealing with the Roman law tradition in the kingdom of Hungary in the middle ages. In the second part of the article the subsequent fate of Roman law is analyzed. The author points out the signficance of Roman law in Hungary both in the civil law doctrine and in the lenghty process of codification of private law. He emphasizes also the role of the civil law doctrine based on Roman law in the current recodification of private (civil) law in Hungary.

CODIFYING TORT LAW: LESSONS FROM THE PROPOSALS FOR REFORM OF THE FRENCH CIVIL CODE

AbstractThis article deals with a topic at the heart of modern comparative law: codification of private law on a national and European level. It offers a critical assessment of the recent French attempt to redraft the obligations provisions of its civil code, focusing on the revisions to the law of tort or delict. There has been little analysis of these provisions within or outside France. This article examines the key changes proposed and identifies the implications in terms of tort policy.

Die Mehrsprachigkeit der schweizerischen Rechtskultur: Probleme und Chancen

Die Mehrsprachigkeit der schweizerischen Rechtskultur: Probleme und Chancen, 10.1628/003372508786013205, Jahrgang 72 (2008) / Heft 4, 0033-7250 (1868-7059), The Rabel Journal of Comparative and International Private Law

Law, Culture and Civil Codification in a Mixed Legal System

RésuméLes comparativistes décrivent généralement les juridictions mixtes comme ayant été construites sur la double fondation du droit civil romano-germanique et de lacommon lawanglo-américaine. Cette description largement acceptée examine les juridictions mixtes à partir d'une perspective juridique formelle interne. Mon étude propose un nouveau prisme analytique pour examiner les juridictions mixtes: une perspective qui prend en considération l'interaction complexe entre le droit et la culture dans une juridiction mixte. L'étude de cas est la codification du droit privé dans la juridiction mixte qu'est Israël. Un code civil ne reflète pas la logique interne ou l'histoire du système juridique israélien, étant donné que celui-ci a été façonné principalement sur des idées anglo-saxonnes qui découragent généralement les codifications. Du point de vue culturel, par contre, le principe de la codification n'est pas entièrement étranger à la société israélienne, vu qu'un code civil est perçu comme un symbole d'indépendance juridique et de modernisation ancré dans la culture politique européenne qui est si bien connue par la plupart des Israéliens. L'histoire de la codification en Israël illustre qu'au-delà du mélange du droit civil et de lacommon lawen droit israélien, le système juridique israélien est également mixte dans le sens, qu'il contient un mélange entre le droit qui est principalement (bien que non exclusivement) influencé par la tradition anglo-saxonne, et la culture politique et juridique qui est surtout inspirée des idées propres à l'Europe continental et qui ont été importées en Israël par les immigrants juifs.

Civil Codification, Law and Culture in a Mixed Legal System

Compartists usually describe mixed legal systems as being built upon dual foundations of Romano-Germanic civil law and Anglo-American common law. This widely accepted description examines mixed systems from an internally legal perspective, and addresses the hybrid character and origin of their laws. As opposed to the intra-legal viewpoint, this paper offers a new yardstick for investigating mixed systems: an external - meta-legal - perspective, which examines the complex interplay between law and culture in a mixed jurisdiction. My case study is the codification of private law in the mixed system of Israel. A civil code does not reflect the inner logic or history of the Israeli legal system, as this system has been shaped mainly along Anglo-Saxon lines which generally discourage the enactment of codes. But seen from an external - meta-legal - perspective, a civil code is not a concept alien to Israeli society, because the idea of civil codification and its perception as a symbol of legal independence and modernization are inherent in the European political culture that most Israelis are familiar with. The story of civil codification in Israel demonstrates that beyond the common-law-civil-law mixedness within Israeli law, the Israeli legal system is also mixed in a more profound sense, namely, it contains a spatial separation between the law which is primarily (though not exclusively) influenced by the Anglo-Saxon tradition, and the legal and political culture which is mainly inspired by ideas embedded in continental Europe, which were imported to Israel by Jewish immigrants. In order to understand civil codification in Israel, familiarity with Israeli law and institutions is therefore insufficient; one must also appreciate the political culture of the country.

Codification, Coherence, and Proprietary Competition

The codification of private law is a heroic enterprise. A codification process can facilitate the reexamination and the refinement of our existing rules and further contribute to their coherent coexistence. We should, however, take codifiers' attempts to improve the coherence of private law with a grain of salt, remembering that in most cases the only defensible coherentist moves are normative (rather than doctrinal) and local (rather than global). This important lesson requires rethinking two unfortunate suggestions of the proposed Israeli civil code: unifying the remedial principles of contract law and tort law and creating a super-category of property covering assets of all stripes. By contrast, the proposed consolidation in one chapter of the law of proprietary competitions is a laudable suggestion. The rules regulating this amalgam of cases need to face similar normative questions and thus justify a unified treatment. Yet, even in this context important factual differences between the different types of competitions entail significant contextual refinements that an overly broad treatment obscures. An improved version of the proposed Israeli civil code should clearly address these subtleties, which the existing common law already reflects.

The Civil Code of the Russian Federation from Foreign and Comparative Law Perspectives: An Introduction

AbstractThe author provides context to the readers of the six papers featured in this issue of the Review of Central and East European Law, which examine elements of the new Civil Code of the Russian Federation from foreign and comparative law perspectives. A brief history of the milestones in Quebec and Russian experiences in private law codifi cation is supplemented with a narrative describing the lead role played in the latter by the Private Law Research Center in Moscow, and the support role played by, among others, the McGill University Faculty of Law.

Editorial: The Future of European Private Law: An Introduction

The European Commission has ‘launched a reflection on the opportuneness, the possible form, the contents and the legal basis’ of ‘non-sector-specific-measures’. That sounds tentative, thoughtful, scrupulous, and, it must be said, opaque. What is a nonsector-specific-measure (NSSM)? What is to be launched so cautiously, camouflaged behind this new jargon? Launching a NSSM does not sound so very risky, not as dangerous as, say, weapons of mass destruction (WMD). So why engage in circumlocution, hesitantly testing the waters, while pondering such questions as opportuneness and legal basis? In truth, NSSM, once stripped of its distracting multiple hyphenation, is code for nothing less than a European Code. ‘Non-sector-specific’ means a general law, applicable to all market transactions in Europe. What is being considered is a code of contract law, broadly conceived, perhaps as a first step to a wider codification of private law. One suddenly understands the Commission’s need for reflection and camouflage, whilst reflecting on whether they can get away with it (opportuneness), and how to explain that it is even constitutional (legal basis). This proposal is contemplating what would amount to a kind of mass destruction, that is destruction of the national private law traditions of every Member State and their replacement with uniform laws. In the light of these developments, however, it is certainly opportune for us in this special issue to consider the future of European private law. Opinions of legal scholars about these intimations of the future for private law express the widest possible spectrum of reactions, from infectious enthusiasm to fierce hostility. The issue does not simply divide opinion between European integrationists and Euro-sceptics, but also creates fissures within and between the political left and right. Without attempting to encompass the whole spectrum of views, the essays in this special issue share the starting-point that beneficial European integration may require further legal measures for facilitating trade within the internal market. But it is also common ground that these further legal measures cannot be regarded as some mere technical problem to be overcome by experts. European Law Journal, Vol. 10, No. 6, November 2004, pp. 649–652. © Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2004, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA