Danila Caruso, ‘The Baby and the Bath Water: The American Critique of European Contract Law’

Abstract:
This paper aims to contribute to a larger research agenda concerning the possibility of meaningful transatlantic dialogue about private-law reform. Both the European Union and the United States regulate private actor autonomy extensively. In spite of contextual similarities, there are several barriers making dialogue among legal scholars difficult. In particular, the conversation about social justice, an important element of private law reform within the European Union, is now quite marginal in American contract law scholarship. In U.S. legal academia, social justice is a matter for moral philosophers, development economists, and constitutionalists. Against this background, this paper takes a close look at a recent transatlantic exchange in matters of private law reform – a Chicago Law School conference on a proposed Common European Sales Law – and identifies a few counter-intuitive points of convergence between U.S. and European scholarship. Along the way, the paper also highlights structural and discursive incompatibilities, but concludes that the dialogue is, as a whole, valuable and should be kept alive.

Danila Caruso, ‘The Baby and the Bath Water: The American Critique of European Contract Law‘. American Journal of Comparative Law, DOI 10.5131/AJCL.2012.0025.

First posted 2013-04-07 11:26:24

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