This book sought to inform practitioners, scholars and students alike. In a world in which jurisdictions are no longer isolated normative orderings, and where both traders and consumers engage in contractual relationships beyond national borders daily, obtaining a better understanding of local judicial practices of interpreting contracts is indispensable. After all, as pointed out at the outset of this book and in the chapter by Remus Valsan on the law and economics of contract interpretation, contracts are necessarily incomplete, and few breach of contract disputes do not involve at least a disagreement as to the nature of the performance that the contract requires of the parties.

This volume's comprehensive comparative study advances our understanding of contract interpretation in European private law in three respects: it enriches the conventional conceptual framework for the methods of contract interpretation; it challenges the presumptive dichotomy of common and civil law jurisdictions; and it provides a finer-grained analysis of the role of standards of ‘good faith’ in contract interpretation. Below, we will explain and offer examples of the ways in which this volume realises these three innovations. We will conclude with observing to what extent there can be said to exist a ‘common core’ of contract interpretation in European private law.

ENRICHING THE CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK: DISTINGUISHING AIMS AND MODALITIES OF INTERPRETATION

Legal scholarship ofter distinguishes the methods of interpretation employed in different jurisdictions in terms of a single spectrum ranging from the textual to the more contextual. However, the national reports and comparative analyses presented in this volume call for a finer-grained theoretical framework. Indeed, a two-dimensional matrix recognising both the aims and modalities of interpretation methods is capable of revealing more nuanced differences and similarities between jurisdictions.

First, the aim of judicial contract interpretation involves what a court seeks to uncover; the means of interpretation involves how that aim is to be achieved. The national reporters’ Opening Remarks show that we may distinguish three aims. The first involves the meaning of the contractual terms that the actual parties factually intended (‘actual intentions’).