European private law has been in the making for a number of decades. The main goal has been to serve the needs of the Single Market. Despite a variety of eorts to make national private laws converge, little unity has emerged. Nevertheless, the Single Market has survived and even grown. This talk oers a critical assessment of the EU’s achievements in the development of European private law. It will examine how the ECJ has interpreted the EU Directives in key areas of contract and tort, and ask to what extent the case law of the European court has harmonized the law in these elds. The presentation will also reect on possible alternatives to the Directives, and question the meaning and need…

There are many conceptions of constitutionalism, and many aspects of it even within particular conceptions. But one important dimension of constitutionalism is the way in which constitutions impose second-order constraints on first-order policy, political, and moral preferences. Policies or decisions that might on the balance of reasons be wise may still be unconstitutional because they are procedurally imperfect or, more importantly, because they violate rights-based side constraints on otherwise advantageous policies. Even welfare- or happiness- or utility-maximizing policies may still be unconstitutional because they infringe on, for example, rights to equality, or rights of freedom of expression or freedom of religion, or the rights of those charged with crimes. Sometimes constitutions impose such second-order constraints on first-order policies because of…

Central-local relationship is an important constitutional issue which every nation, whether big or small, needs to deal with. It is usually prescribed for by the constitution of the nation. The formation of the central-local relationship in a specic nation often has its historical reasons. In nations adopting a federal system, such as the United States of America, Australia and India, local governments, especially state or provincial governments, are the basis for the establishment of federal government, which is the central government. In nations adopting a unitary system, such as the United Kingdom (“the UK”) and China, the purpose to set up local governments is to administer the state aairs more eciently. In many nations, either federal or unitary, all local…

Gunnar HEINSOHN, Professor emeritus of the University Bremen, is a historian, sociologist and economist, who elaborated — together with Otto STEIGER — a specic theory of modern economics, namely the theory of ownership-based economics. This theory deals with a symptomatic lacune of mainstream economics — this being the absence of any theoretical explanation of money and interest in mainstream economics — and focuses on legal institutions such as rights in rem (ownership) and contracts (credit agreements) to explain the origins of money and modern business cycles. The key elements of mainstream economics, such as the pretense of universalism and the assumption of a homo oeconomicus and his self-interest driven rationality, are amongst those building blocks of contemporary economics which are…