The Structural Transformation of European Private Law : A Critique of Juridical Hermeneutics

This book provides a ground-breaking reading, both comparative and historical, of the structure and transformation of private law in continental Europe. In doing so it reconstructs a hermeneutical praxis that is (it is argued) at the core of private law: the balancing of conflicting interests and normative considerations. The book makes three key arguments; firstly that ''balancing'' in private law is a not merely an analytical process but instead a form of legal argument. Secondly, in order to truly understand private law, a bottom-up historical analysis must be adopted. Thirdly, ''balancing'' has always been a comparative process within civil law systems and across the civil-common law divide.This is a magisterial survey of European private law, which offers innovative analytical tools that afford a deep understanding of the evolution of the discipline.

This book proposes a new analysis of the transformation of Europe through integration, exactly 30 years after the beginning of transformation scholarship. It consists of a reconstruction of the development and present condition of European integration in relation to private ordering. Looking at the interface between, on the one hand, the EU constitutional order and, on the other hand, private ordering, the book recounts three major structural transformations over the last six decades. Delving into the private law areas most exposed to the current modernisation wave – consumer law, internal market, lex mercatoria, digitisation, artificial intelligence, data protection, standardised contracts, finance and political economy, and labour – the book critically explores a reconfiguration of Europe’s constitutional structures relative to, and that results from, what to some appears to be an almost irresistible rise of private ordering through a transformed hermeneutics (balancing). This is a magisterial survey of European law, European private law, and comparative law seen through a pathbreaking comparative methodology labelled ‘juridical comparative hermeneutics’ within civil law systems and across the civil-common law divide, which offers innovative analytical tools that afford a deep understanding of the evolution of the disciplines.