A comparative investigation into the revolution in private law in the era of human rights
Scotland and South Africa are mixed jurisdictions, combining features of common law and civil law traditions. ...Over the last decade, a shared feature in both Scotland and South Africa has been a new and intense focus on human rights.
In Scotland, the European Convention on Human Rights now constitutes an important element in the foundation of all domestic law. Similarly, the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, adopted in 1996, has a Bill of Rights as its cornerstone. This binds the legislature, the executive, the judiciary and all organs of state - and also private parties.
In some ways, the Scottish and South African experience could not be more dissimilar, and the 'constitutional moments' from which these documents sprang were very different. At the same time, the parallels are close and compelling. This book, written by experts from both jurisdictions, examines exactly how human-rights provisions influence private law, looking at all branches of the subject. Moreover, it gives a unique perspective by comparing the approach in these kindred legal systems, providing a benchmark for both.
This book develops the implications of that venerable Aristotelian notion of justice for understanding contemporary private law. Over the last decades corrective justice has become a central but ...controversial idea among legal scholars and theorists. This book presents corrective justice as the normative idea latent in the institutions and concepts of a fair and coherent regime of liability. It begins by setting out the conceptual components of corrective justice: the correlativity of the parties normative positions as the structuring idea of their relationship, and a robust notion of rights and their correlative duties (conceived in Kantian terms) as the content appropriate to legal relationships structured in that way. It then describes the significance of corrective justice for various legal contexts: for the grounds of liability in negligence, contract and unjust enrichment; for the relationship between right and remedy; for legal education; for the comparative understanding of private law; and for the compatibility of corrective justice with state support for the poor. The book integrates the concrete and wide-ranging treatment of legal doctrine with a unitary and comprehensive set of theoretical ideas. Combining legal and philosophical analysis, it presents private law in non-instrumental terms, as a distinctive mode of moral discourse that focuses on the normativity intrinsic to the parties relationship.
As part of the European integration, an ambitious programme of harmonisation of European private law is taking place. This new edition in the Swedish Studies in European Law series, the work of both ...legal scholars and politicians, aims to create a modern codification in the tradition of the great continental codifications such as the BGB and the Code Civil. A significant step towards this development was taken in 2009 with the creation of the Draft Common Frame of Reference which contains model rules for a large part of central private law. The process raises a number of questions. What are the advantages and disadvantages of such an intensive process of harmonisation? Are there lessons to be learnt from the Europeanisation of private law through history? Are there any further steps which have been taken in order to create a European private law? What is the future of European private law? These crucial questions were discussed at a conference in Stockholm, sponsored by the Swedish Network of European Legal Studies. This important volume includes the answers offered by leading scholars in the field.
In recent years, the law has observed an increasing number of access conflicts in purely private law contexts. Based on the BVerfG's stadium ban decision, this study shows that the institute of the ...contract plays a central role in this context. By combining a multilateral perspective and insights from differentiation theory, it is argued that the contract fulfills an inclusion function in modern society. In particular, the general principle of equality is highly responsive to mediate social inclusion conflicts in law. The thesis sees in the participation dimension the convincing connecting factor to justify its effect in private law. The work was awarded the 'Preis der Stadt Bayreuth‘ and the ‚Carl-Gareis-Preis‘ of the University of Bayreuth.
Anglo-American private law (the law governing mutual rights and obligations of individuals) has been a far more complex phenomenon than is usually recognized. Attempts to reduce it to a single ...explanatory principle, or to a precisely classified or categorized map, scheme, or diagram, are likely to distort the past by omitting or marginalizing material inconsistent with proposed principles or schemes. Many legal issues cannot be allocated exclusively to one category. Often several concepts have worked concurrently and cumulatively, so that competing explanations and categories are not so much alternatives, of which only one can be correct, as different dimensions of a complex phenomenon, of which several may be simultaneously valid and necessary. This 2003 study will be of importance to those interested in property, tort, contract, unjust enrichment, legal reasoning, legal method, the history of the common law, and the relation between legal theory and legal history.
Neue Technologien werfen neue rechtliche Fragen auf. Sie regen aber auch dazu an, alte Fragen neu zu denken. Inspiriert durch die aktuelle Diskussion um die Haftung für Systeme der Künstlichen ...Intelligenz, denen - ähnlich wie Menschen und Tieren - eine gewisse "Autonomie" zugeschrieben wird, erörtert Ann-Kristin Mayrhofer die Thematik der Haftung für fremde Autonomie. Sie vergleicht dabei die außervertragliche Haftung von Geschäftsherren und Tierhaltern mit der Haftung von Herstellern und Nutzern von "technischen Agenten" de lege lata. Ausgehend davon macht die Autorin Vorschläge für eine Weiterentwicklung des Haftungsrechts de lege ferenda. Der Schwerpunkt liegt auf dem Umgang mit den Risiken der Geschädigten, Schadensersatzansprüche nicht durchsetzen zu können, wobei insbesondere Beweisschwierigkeiten in den Blick genommen werden.
Neue Technologien werfen neue rechtliche Fragen auf. Sie regen aber auch dazu an, alte Fragen neu zu denken. Inspiriert durch die aktuelle Diskussion um die Haftung für Systeme der Künstlichen Intelligenz, denen - ähnlich wie Menschen und Tieren - eine gewisse "Autonomie" zugeschrieben wird, erörtert Ann-Kristin Mayrhofer die Thematik der Haftung für fremde Autonomie. Sie vergleicht dabei die außervertragliche Haftung von Geschäftsherren und Tierhaltern mit der Haftung von Herstellern und Nutzern von "technischen Agenten" de lege lata. Ausgehend davon macht die Autorin Vorschläge für eine Weiterentwicklung des Haftungsrechts de lege ferenda. Der Schwerpunkt liegt auf dem Umgang mit den Risiken der Geschädigten, Schadensersatzansprüche nicht durchsetzen zu können, wobei insbesondere Beweisschwierigkeiten in den Blick genommen werden.
Generalklauseln wie Treu und Glauben oder die Guten Sitten werden in der gegenwärtigen Privatrechtsdiskussion meist unter dem Aspekt ihrer näheren Konkretisierung behandelt, die ausgehend von den ...Grundsätzen der hergebrachten juristischen Methodenlehre auf die Ableitung präziserer, unmittelbar anwendbarer Rechtssätze gerichtet ist. Marietta Auer hinterfragt diesen Anspruch kritisch und zeigt, daß die Problematik der Generalklauseln nur von einem der herkömmlichen Methodenlehre übergeordneten rechtstheoretischen Blickwinkel, der die zwischen den Grundwertungen des Privatrechtsdenkens bestehenden Antinomien in ihrem historisch wandelbaren Spannungsverhältnis in den Mittelpunkt stellt, angemessen erfaßt werden kann. Auf dieser Grundlage erweist sich die Entwicklung der Generalklauseln während des 20. Jahrhunderts sowohl im deutschen als auch im amerikanischen Recht als Ausdruck der das gesamte Privatrechtsdenken prägenden Grundkonflikte zwischen Individualismus und Kollektivismus, Rechtssicherheit und Einzelfallgerechtigkeit sowie zwischen Richterbindung und Richterfreiheit, von deren Berücksichtigung damit auch jede theoretische Behandlung der Generalklauselproblematik auszugehen hat. Ziel der Untersuchung ist damit ein Paradigmenwechsel in der Privatrechtstheorie, der über die Problematik der Generalklauseln hinaus von Bedeutung ist.
In the present study, the author examines some temporal aspects of the mandate contract in Romanian civil law. The innovation of the current Romanian Civil Code, which limits the duration of the ...mandate to 3 years if it is not specified by the parties, will be analysed. In that context, it also covers the effect of this provision on mandate for representation in legal proceedings and the mandate of the directors of companies. The special case of tacit acceptance of the mandate, time issues arising during the execution of the mandate, and the prescription of obligations that results from the contract are presented. Finally, the author analyses the legal provisions relating to the termination of mandate contract and the time limit for the approval of legal transactions concluded by an unauthorized agent.
Provisions on prescription have been revised during the codification of the new Civil Code of Hungary, Act V of 2013. Despite the early proposals, its core system has not changed a lot. Nevertheless, ...several details, especially in other fields of Civil Code were amended, so the framework of the application of the basic rules of prescription (i.e. its period, the commencement, suspension, or renewal of the period) has changed. Not only the right to performance of an obligation is subjected to prescription but also any right or claim stemming from relationships under Civil Code. In my opinion, Article 6:21 of the Civil Code suggests a dichotomous model for all the legal consequences when a statutory time prescribed for enforcing claims or exercising rights has lapsed: a period may be preclusive (the right is extinguished) or extinctive (the right cannot be enforceable in judicial proceedings anymore). In the following, this study concentrates on a particular time period for enforcing the legal consequences (challenging the contract on the ground of relative ineffectiveness) in case of the infringement of pre-emption right.
The study examines the provisions of the Romanian Civil Code concerning the condition, and more specifically the types of condition. The basic question is a technical one pertinent to codification: ...how detailed should the regulation of condition be in the civil codes, or what should be the exact rules to be included in the code, and what requirements can be left to the courts to elaborate? By contrasting detailed (e.g. Romanian) and brief (e.g. Hungarian)regulatory approaches, the author concludes that strong arguments can be made in favour of both. The key is to find the blissful medium: short but prescriptive regulation on the necessary issues, guiding the parties’ behaviour and facilitating judicial decision-making is opportune. The author considers that the ideal is a code which is not too detailed but which is clarified by courts on all the substantive issues relevant to the society.
