Category Archives: Transformative Private Law
‘The Making of the Debtor Society: From Affluence to Normalised Indebtedness’
In this contribution, I introduce the concept of a ‘debtor society’ and explore how it reflects broader socio-economic transformations shaped by neoliberal policies and financialisation. Building on Pistor’s (2019) argument that capital is coded in law, I argue that the debtor society is defined by two key elements: the normalisation of indebtedness as a central […]
‘How the EU Can Avoid Green Colonialism’
Twenty years after its publication, the Manifesto for Social Justice in Contract Law’s call to ‘align the general principles of social justice that govern the market order with standards designed to protect public goods such as a healthy environment’ continues to resonate. The traditional definition of social justice – focused on the fair and equal […]
‘The Commodity Form Theory of Law, Monopoly Capitalism and Transformative Private Law’
Given the current intertwined and multifaceted global crisis, and given the at best modest outcomes of private law in moderating deepening inequalities – despite the numerous and laudable efforts by scholars with different backgrounds – does it still make sense to enquire whether and how private law could foster social justice? In this short intervention, […]
‘Contract, Welfare and Radical Democracy. Viable Promise or Wishful Thinking?’
The interplay between the law of contract, the welfare state, and the quality of democracy has always been at the core of modern European legal systems. From a historical perspective, it is easy to observe that – well before the rise of European Private Law (EPL) and well beyond the narrow link between contract and […]
‘Protection of the “Vulnerable” Consumers in the Neurotechnology’
Digital technology is being integrated into our daily lives and personal spheres and soon it will be part of our bodies. For instance, advancements in neurotechnology include brain imaging and the manipulation of brain activity through neural devices, as part of the diagnoses and treatment of several psychiatric and neurological conditions. However, these technologies are […]
‘The Right to Work and Social Justice in the Face of Mass Unemployment’
This post focuses on social justice in the realm of work, more specifically on access to jobs and livelihoods. Daniela Caruso, in proposing in 2013 a retrospective analysis of social justice scholarly projects in European ‘private law’ and/or ‘contract law’, rightly criticized the tendency of those projects to focus almost exclusively on consumer protection and […]
‘Thinking Freedom of Contract Sustainably’
At the time of writing this blogpost (18th of September 2024), large parts of eastern and central Europe are drowning in historical floodings. Would I have started writing this blogpost earlier on, I could have referenced to raging wildfires at the gates of Athens; floodings in southern Germany; record heatwaves in eastern Europe; and so […]
‘Consumer Law and Inequality: Comparative Approaches to Consumer Vulnerability’
With the amount of exploitative digital tools explicitly targeting consumers’ vulnerabilities on the rise, it hardly seems controversial to call for greater protections. Whether consumer law should be concerned with inequality, however, is a multi-faceted question that depends to an extent on the particular vision and understanding of the aims of consumer law in play, […]
‘Our Digitalized Lives – Taming the Omni-Present Private Market Logic’
With the huge expansion of digitalization into almost all areas of our public and private lives and our societies, we also witnessed an unprecedented expansion of a legal framework structure incorporating the free market logic – namely of so-called ‘private law’ – into the very same areas: This applies, for instance, to the platform economy, […]
‘Prefigurative Private Law’
Two decades after the Manifesto, it has become clear that private law injustices – that is, injustices done through private law – will not be overcome through directives and regulations. The ordinary legislative procedure will not bring social justice in European private law. What’s left, then, of private law justice? Where can we find inspiration […]