Category Archives: European Private Law
Daniel Kiat Boon Seng, ‘The Liability of Internet Platform Intermediaries’
ABSTRACT The legal landscape surrounding Internet intermediaries – such as e-commerce platforms, social media, and ISPs – centers on their liability for third-party actions. Such liability can be framed as direct liability, for instance, for defective products through strict product liability, and as indirect liability, for instance, in actions for defamation and copyright infringement. The […]
Francesco Lucherini, ‘The Housing Challenge to Neoliberal Homeownership: Profitability Relativism and Governance Asymmetry as Post-Neoliberalization’
ABSTRACT The widespread rise of renting unaffordability and gentrification across European cities has drawn attention to the social unsustainability of heavily financialized and privatized housing markets. Indeed, contemporary patterns of standardization and depoliticization of housing crises collide with the increasingly pronounced functional equivalence between tenancies and home-owning, as well as with future urbanization prospects. The […]
Morell and Schellenberg, ‘Regulating Third-Party Litigation Funding? Weighing the Arguments in the Light of Extant EU Consumer Protection Safeguards’
ABSTRACT This paper cautions against the use of consumer protection as a Trojan horse for broader regulation of third-party litigation funding (TPLF) in the EU. The EU already operates a uniform consumer protection framework that prevents adverse outcomes for consumers across the board, including legal services. Section II evaluates a selection of arguments commonly advanced […]
Dudás and Király-Szitás, ‘The Evolution of the Legal Institute of Convalidation of Null and Void Contracts in the Yugoslav Legal Tradition: Historical Influences and Legal Legacy’
ABSTRACT Contract law is fundamentally shaped by the tension between fairness and enforceability, a balance that defective contracts often disrupt. While formal requirements are introduced above else to safeguard public policy goals – such as ensuring legal certainty – subsequent validation of defective contracts (convalidation) serves to rectify them, primarily focusing on the private interests […]
Enrico Baffi, ‘Mistake as a Defect of Consent: The Strengths and Weaknesses of the Italian Approach Compared with the US Approach’
ABSTRACT This essay aims to conduct a comparative inquiry into the doctrine of unilateral mistake in US and Italian contract law, adopting the methodological lens of law and economics in order both to examine the effects that the various rules produce on the conduct of contracting parties and to express an assessment, in terms of […]
‘Marriage, Property and Solidarity in Europe: Applying the Numerical Comparative Method in Family Law’
How is patrimonial solidarity between spouses conceived and operationalised in continental European jurisdictions? In most systems, the property relations between spouses are governed by a matrimonial property regime. The default regime, which is applicable in the absence of a marital agreement, usually ensures that the property accumulated during the marriage (the ‘matrimonial property’) is equally […]
Lorenzo Bairati, ‘Geographical Indications for Agricultural Products’
ABSTRACT Food systems are regulated by a global and hybrid legal framework. In fact, while supranational and international sources play an increasingly important role, private regulators are also becoming more and more involved alongside traditional public policy-makers. Within this context, Geographical Indications (GIs) serve as the main tool in the European Union and beyond to […]
Kimon Saitakis, ‘Tokenized Succession: Inheritance of DLT-Based Digital Assets in the European Legal Order’
ABSTRACT The inheritance of distributed ledger technology (DLT)-based digital assets – such as cryptocurrencies, non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and tokenized claims – poses a formidable challenge to traditional civil law succession frameworks. Unlike conventional property, these digital assets are characterized by decentralization, pseudonymity, immutability and self-custody, features that complicate both their legal classification and their practical […]
Leerssen, van Duin and van Hoboken, ‘Private Enforcement of the Digital Services Act (DSA)’
ABSTRACT The Digital Services Act (DSA) represents a significant shift in EU digital regulation, aiming to create a safe, predictable, and trustworthy online environment whilst protecting fundamental rights. While public oversight and co-regulation by the European Commission and national Digital Services Coordinators (DSCs) have already attracted significant attention, this paper considers the underappreciated role of […]
Riccardo Serafin, ‘The Road(s) to a Sustainable Contract Law: Three Approaches and Some Remaining Doubts’
ABSTRACT The idea of incorporating environmental sustainability into modern contract law is gaining traction. However, the feasibility of the project as a whole and the concrete changes needed remain largely unsettled and only incompletely explored. The present article contributes to the debate by identifying and critically analysing three strategies (top-down, bottom-up and nudging) to integrate […]