Private Law Theory

In a paper posted on SSRN, The Challenges of Private Law: Towards a Research Agenda for an Autonomy-Based Private Law, Hanoch Dagan lays out a vision of private law as a ‘law of our interpersonal (horizontal) relationships’ that strives to ‘establis[h] ideal frameworks for respectful interaction between self-determining individuals’. Dagan thereby seeks to escape the ‘deadlock’ between views of private law as (1) ‘a garden-variety mode of regulation’ and (2) a branch of law whose focus on ‘individual independence’ makes it ‘resistant to demanding interpersonal claims’. Dagan argues that, in a world ‘of interdependence and of personal difference’, ‘tak[ing] seriously law’s commitment to autonomy as self-authorship or self-determination’ requires subjecting private law to a ‘prescription of structural pluralism and [an] injunction of relational justice’ … (more)

[John Golden, New Private Law, 7 March]

First posted 2016-03-08 06:02:26