Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-5c6d5d7d68-tdptf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-08-07T04:14:53.270Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

IV - Private law and the Economic Constitution

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 February 2010

Hugh Collins
Hugh Collins
Affiliation:
London School of Economics and Political Science
Get access

Summary

At the end of the Cold War, in about 1989, the sharp and mutually reinforcing clash between capitalism and communism that had divided Europe for half a century lost its magnetic force on politics. Presented with a choice over the type of social and political order, citizens of former Eastern bloc countries opted to join the European club. They believed that the European Community offered both liberal democratic political institutions and a social model that controlled the market economy for the purpose of general welfare. Most importantly, the Community seemed to have found a way to avoid the damaging extremes of either unrestrained market capitalism or totalitarian communism.

Yet the European Community, as it had developed till then, could not fulfil that promise of setting a framework of laws and institutions that would secure a European social democratic model. In Europe's multi-level system of government, Member States retained control over crucial elements in this model. It was national constitutions that sustained and guaranteed liberal democracy. Even for the international protection of human rights, it was a different organisation, the Council of Europe, and not the European Community, which provided legal guarantees. Similarly, national laws and welfare systems performed the bulk of the tasks of securing social justice and social inclusion for citizens with only marginal inputs from the European Community such as regional support funds.

Type
Chapter
Information
The European Civil Code
The Way Forward
 , pp. 91 - 123
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2008

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Maduro, M. P., We the Court: The European Court of Justice and the European Economic Constitution (Oxford: Hart, 1998).Google Scholar
Alston, P. (ed.), The EU and Human Rights (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999) 449.
Davies, P., ‘Market Integration and Social Policy in the Court of Justice’ (1995) 24 Industrial Law Journal51CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Somma, A., ‘Social Justice and the Market in European Contract Law’ (2006) 2 European Review of Contract Law181.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hobbes, T., Leviathan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1955) (first published 1651) 89–90Google Scholar
Hart, H. L. A., The Concept of Law, 2nd edn. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), 196–197Google Scholar
Supiot, A., ‘The Dogmatic Foundations of the Market’ (2000) 29 Industrial Law Journal321CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Basedow, J., ‘A Common Contract Law for a Common Market’ (1996) 33 Common Market Law Review1169, 1179Google Scholar
Collins, H., Regulating Contracts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), chapter 5Google Scholar
Ashiagbor, D., ‘Economic and Social Rights in the European Charter of Fundamental Rights’ (2004) (1) European Human Rights Law Review62Google Scholar
Hesselink, M. W. (ed.), The Politics of a European Civil Code (The Hague: Kluwer Law International, 2006) 125.
Simpson, A. W. B. (ed.), Oxford Essays in Jurisprudence, 2nd series (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973)
Hale, R. L., ‘Bargaining, Duress, and Economic Liberty’ (1943) 43 Columbia Law Review603CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kronman, A. T., ‘Contract Law and Distributive Justice’ (1980) 89 Yale Law Journal472CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dagan, H., ‘The Distributive Foundation of Corrective Justice’ (1999) 98 Michigan Law Review138CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Keren-Paz, T., ‘An Inquiry into the Merits of Redistribution through Tort Law: Rejecting the Claim of Randomness’ (2003) 16 Canadian Journal of Law & Jurisprudence91CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kennedy, D., ‘The Political Stakes in “Merely Technical” Issues of Contract Law’ (2001) 9 European Review of Private Law7Google Scholar
Graber, C.Beat and Teubner, G., ‘Art and Money: Constitutional Rights in the Private Sphere’ (1998) 18 Oxford Journal of Legal Studies61CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gerstenberg, O., ‘Private Law and the New European Constitutional Settlement’ (2004) 10 European Law Journal766CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hesselink, M. J., The New European Private Law (The Hague: Kluwer Law International, 2002) 184 ffGoogle Scholar
Cherednychenko, O., ‘The Constitutionalization of Contract Law: Something New Under the Sun?’ (2004) 8(1) Electronic Journal of Comparative Law, www//.ejcl.org/. See chapter IX belowGoogle Scholar
Black, J., ‘Decentring Regulation: Understanding the Role of Regulation and Self-Regulation in a Post-regulating World’ (2001) 54 Current Legal Problems 103, 128–144CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Parker, C., Scott, C., Lacey, N. and Braithwaite, J. (eds.), Regulating Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004) 33–34CrossRef
Weber, M., Economy and Society, Roth, G. and Wittich, C. (eds.) (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968) vol. II, 880–895Google Scholar
Wieacker, F., A History of Private Law in Europe, trans. Weir, T. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995)Google Scholar
Teubner, G. (ed.), Dilemmas of Law in the Welfare State (New York and Berlin: de Gruyter, 1988) 280
Duguit, L., Le droit social, le droit individuel et la transformation de l'état (Paris: Alcan, 1908)Google Scholar
Gurvitch, G., L'idée du droit social (Paris: Sirey, 1932)Google Scholar
Teubner, G. (ed.), Dilemmas of Law in the Welfare State (New York and Berlin: de Gruyter, 1988) 40
Breyer, S., Regulation and Its Reform (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984)Google Scholar
Sunstein, C., ‘Paradoxes of the Regulatory State’ (1990) 57 University of Chicago Law Review407CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wilhelmmson, T., Paunio, E. and Pohjolainen, A. (eds.), Private Law and the Many Cultures of Europe (The Hague: Kluwer Law International, 2007) 177, 187
Schmid, C. U., ‘The Instrumentalist Conception of the acquis communautaire in Consumer Law and its Implications on a European Contract Law Code’ (2005) 1 European Review of Contract Law 211, 222CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morijn, J., ‘Balancing Fundamental Rights and Common Market Freedoms in Union Law: Schmidberger and Omega in the Light of the European Constitution’ (2006) 12 European Law Journal15CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Giubboni, S., Social Rights and Market Freedom in the European Constitution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davies, A. C. L., ‘The Right to Strike Versus Freedom of Establishment in EC Law: The Battle Commences’ (2006) 35(1) Industrial Law Journal75CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×