Regulating Risk Through Private Law

This volume sets out, for nine significant legal systems, an overarching conception of risk in legal theory, particularly of the linked role of risk-taking in generating liability and in liability regulating risk. It is the first book-length comparative attempt to explain what risk-based reasoning adds to private law, with a core focus on the law of tort.

In twelve topical papers, written by renowned experts in distinct areas of the law, the reader will find out how private law and private international law instruments can serve public policy goals (such as the protection of the environment, product safety or services of general economic interest) and how these instruments interact with regulation in the proper sense. A must for those who want to explore the borderline if it exists between public and private law in the EU. Jules Stuyck, Leuven University, Belgium In the context of the current debate on the desirability and process of forming European private law (EPL), this book considers one fundamental question addressing its descriptive and normative dimension: does and should EPL pursue regulatory objectives beyond market integration? The editors argue that because national categories are of little help in grasping the characteristics of a multi-level regulatory system, it is necessary to link three perspectives: private law, regulation and conflict of laws. This book explores this interaction in four distinct fields: product liability, environmental protection, public utilities and e-commerce. The results show that EPL is highly regulatory and that the implications of this change have not been adequately considered by institutions and by scholars. The Regulatory Function of European Private Law will be of great interest to academics of law, as well as to private and public lawyers and European policymakers.

This volume sets out, for nine significant legal systems, an overarching conception of risk in legal theory, particularly of the linked role of risk-taking in generating liability and in liability regulating risk. It is the first book-length comparative attempt to explain what risk-based reasoning adds to private law, with a core focus on the law of tort. Taking tort law as the core case study, the book analyzes national variation in risk understanding, liability, culture and regulation and, from that, develops a legal framework for understanding and responding to risk. The volume draws on more than 25 leading scholars of private law and risk from around the world to develop a coherent and systematic study of risk. The legal systems included span the common law and civil law, large and small, codified and uncodified, as well as those with wider and narrower strict liability rules and causation rules: England and Wales, France, Sweden, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Chile, South Africa and Brazil. The book is in two parts. Part I will look at an overview of the whole field, with a particular view on tort law as common focus; Part II will look to a specific and a national response to a narrow aspect of risk and analyze it in more detail. Part II has chapters that range in topic from medical liability (France) to mining (Chile), and from political theory and the welfare state (Sweden), to the constitutionalisation of risk protections (South Africa). This volume is the first multi-handed work on risk to explore what risk-reasoning adds to private law and how best it can be deployed, resisted or simply understood. Subject: Private Law, Legal Theory, Tort Law]

This book brings together a wide range of contributors from across the common law world to identify and debate the principal moral and systemic challenges facing private law in the remaining part of the twenty-first century. The various contributions identify serious problems relating to complexity and overload, threats to research and education, the law's unintelligibility, the unsatisfactory nature of the law reform process and a general lack of public engagement. They consider the respective future roles of statutes, codes, and judge-made law (in the form of both common law and equitable rules). They consider how best to organise the private law system internally, and how to co-ordinate it externally with other public and economic systems (human rights, regulation, insurance markets and social security frameworks). They address the challenges for private law presented by new forms of technology, and by modern demands for the protection of new and intangible forms of moral interest, such as interests in privacy, 'vindication' and 'personal choice'. They also engage with the critical contemporary debates about access to, and the privatisation of, civil justice. The work is designed as a source of inspiration and reference for private lawyers, as well as legislators, policy-makers and students.

New Private Law Theory is pluralist, comparative, application-oriented, transnational and reflects critical approaches.

Natural and man-made risks have long been recognised as vital conditioning factors in the formation of social institutions and the conduct of social life. In this volume internationally recognised experts examine in detail the implications in practice of the modern concept of risk in particular legal fields. The chapters explore the ways in which the law in its many branches can accommodate, manage and reduce the extent of risk in the modern "Risk Society", matters of pressing importance for the development of all branches of law in all jurisdictions. The fields of activity affected by the issues discussed include law, medicine, insurance, state security and public health. The collection also contributes to comparative legal studies in respect of risk and the law, presenting a perspective which has largely been neglected outside the works of general theory. Thus the topics considered range from the civil law of injuries in Germany and the food law of the European Union, through sales of goods, including international sales, in English, German and French law, to the English law of torts. Risk and the Law, written by specialists who are authorities in their fields, will be of interest to academics and students who are interested in new developments and ideas regarding the relationship between risk, law and social change in many different fields.

The efficacy of various political institutions is the subject of intense debate between proponents of broad legislative standards enforced through litigation and those who prefer regulation by administrative agencies. This book explores the trade-offs between litigation and regulation, the circumstances in which one approach may outperform the other, and the principles that affect the choice between addressing particular economic activities with one system or the other. Combining theoretical analysis with empirical investigation in a range of industries, including public health, financial markets, medical care, and workplace safety, Regulation versus Litigation sheds light on the costs and benefits of two important instruments of economic policy.

Does private law punish? This collection answers this complex but compelling question. Lawyers from across the spectrum of the law (contract, tort, restitution) explore exactly how it punishes wrong doing. These leading voices ask whether that punishment is effective and what its societal role might be. Taking the discussion out of the technical and into a broader realms of a wider purpose, it is both compelling and thought-provoking.