The idea of human rights as fundamental rights of every person is certainly one of the most powerful ideas of our modern age. Since the American and French revolutions, human rights have been the strongest link between law and democracy. They have played a crucial role when defining notions of constitutionalism and the rule of law. While some human rights have been made famous in national mottos such as the French liberté, égalité et fraternité, other human rights have not attracted such attention. Generally, substantive human rights have been discussed and appreciated more than procedural human rights. Yet, without an effective and well-balanced set of procedural rights, the substantive rights and freedoms of almost any person or business would not enjoy effective protection before the courts of law. Based on the wish to reopen an international comparative discussion on fundamental notions of civil procedure, this book offers a number of insights into procedural human rights from different jurisdictions and different points of view. While some previous studies focused on Northern Europe, many of the authors in this book come from Southern and Eastern Europe, areas where a common understanding of procedural human rights may be an even more pressing necessity.

This book revolves around major legal developments in the fields of European contract law and tort law from 1981 to today and examines whether similarities or divergences can be observed. It examines how opposing concepts such as weaker party protection (consumers as well as SME) and freedom of contract and fault principle are balanced. It also focuses on Europeanisation and constitutionalisation of both contract and tort law and the need to adjust the law in response to digitalisation and new technological, environmental or financial risks. Furthermore, the law of obligations nowadays emerges from very different sources and directions (top-down, bottom-up, but also crossing-over and diagonal). Norms of the law of obligations are not only being made by national legislators and courts, but also by European institutionalised lawmakers and (increasingly important) by private actors, organisations and networks. This book illustrates that the law of obligations evolves in a continuing process of waves. Contradictory tendencies in contract law alternate in focuses on the demands of the free market and the core value of party autonomy on the one hand and on the concept of fairness and weaker-party protection on the other hand. Tort law shows movements discarding former limitations of liability and embracing liability of wider scope and vice versa returns to more restricted approaches.

This book evaluates the application of the first autonomous European civil procedures: the European Order for Payment and the European Small Claims Procedure. The study offers an in-depth comparative and empirical analysis of the way these instruments function in interaction with national procedures in England and Wales, France, Italy, and Romania. The analysis combines available statistics with European and national case law, together with practitioners' experience. This approach provides a comprehensive understanding of the difficulties encountered, and of the solutions chosen to overcome procedural intricacies and to secure parties' procedural rights. The findings create a solid basis for enhancing judicial cooperation and addressing the practical aspects related to the application of the procedures. In its conclusion, the book discusses the ongoing developments taking shape in this area, and reflects on the implications that the legal standards established by the European uniform procedures have for future developments. The book is of particular relevance for practitioners and courts applying the European Order for Payment and the European Small Claims Procedures; for European and national legislators, and policymakers working in this field; and for scholars interested in European civil procedure.

Letter of Intent in International Contracting provides readers with a unique point of reference on the legal effects of letter of intent - the document frequently used in international transactions. Firstly, the book takes a fresh look at trade usages in negotiations of international contracts. It integrates the view of negotiations as strategies and tactics (well-known in business, but largely disregarded by the law) with the legal analysis. Secondly, it discusses in turn those provisions frequently used in letter of intent and comments on them based on a thorough comparative research of four jurisdictions: the Netherlands, France, England and Wales, and United States. The discussion of French law is based on the recent reform of the French law of obligations which significantly modified the French Code civil in 2016. At the international level, the study addresses the 1980 Vienna Convention on the International Sale of Goods and international soft law: UNIDROIT Principles of International Commercial Contracts 2010, Principles of European Contract Law, and the Draft Common Frame of Reference. The book is a result of doctoral research conducted at the Erasmus University Rotterdam. This book is relevant to legal practitioners working in the field of international contracts as well as to scholars and policy makers concerned with harmonization of law based on non-binding principles and business practices.

This rise of a particular kind of European Union legislation known as the 'optional instrument' is a novel trend in the context of EU law, and one that until now has not been comprehensively mapped or explored. This study examines and discusses existing and proposed EU Optional Instruments (OIs) in different fields of European law, including company law, intellectual property law and procedural law (such as the European Company, the Community Trade Mark and the European Small Claims Procedure, respectively), as well as contract law. The study identifies the core elements that define Optional Instruments of the EU and distinguish them from other kinds of EU legislation, especially so-called approximating measures. It provides a detailed overview of a total of twelve OIs in the aforementioned policy areas, charting their development, characteristics and (where appropriate) usage in practice. It investigates the case for and against the use of optional instruments as an alternative means of EU law-making, by analyzing and evaluating the principal arguments in the debate surrounding the use of this legislative method. Finally, it offers an explanation of the varied degree of 'success' of EU OIs already in existence, by identifying possible factors that play a role in this respect and testing the significance of these factors with reference to available empirical data. In doing so, the author provides a framework for future research into this developing phenomenon, as well as guidance for the elaboration of future Optional Instruments of the European Union.

Managing scarcity to serve the public interest is a classic government task. An important way to execute this task is by allocating individual rights that are only available in limited quantities, such as CO2 emission allowances, gambling licences, subsidies, radio frequencies, public contracts and parking permits. Whereas economic and political theory has paid much attention to the allocation of scarce goods and rights, until now a consistent and general legal theory of 'the allocating government' has been missing. This is striking given the fact that limited rights have to be allocated within many sectors and are often of great social significance and financial importance. Decisions on allocation often lead to disputes. This book provides a unique exploration of building blocks for a consistent and general legal theory on the allocation of limited rights by administrative authorities. This book is useful to legislators, administrative authorities, applicants, interested third parties and the courts. The EU-law perspective is an important element in this book, but comparative law and doctrinal approaches are also taken into account. The contributions in this book have been enriched by information from national reports on the allocation of gambling licences, radio frequencies and CO2 emission permits in seven EU Member States: France, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Romania and Spain. (See P. Adriaanse, F. van Ommeren, W. den Ouden and J. Wolswinkel (eds.), Scarcity and the State II. Member State Reports on Gambling Licences, Radio Frequencies and CO2 Emission Permits, Intersentia, Antwerp 2016).The Member State Reports on the Allocation of Gambling Licences, Radio Frequencies and CO2 Emission Permits can be downloaded here.

Biofuels are promoted as a type of renewable energy from biomass that replaces fossil fuels in transportation, in an attempt to achieve the three-fold objectives of energy security, rural development, and GHG emission reductions. However, the increased consumption and production of biofuels have been increasingly subject to criticism for their potential negative impacts on environmental and socio-economic sustainability, and these impacts could be intertwined and have implications ranging from local to global scales. Concerns over sustainability of biofuels have already led to regulatory measures particularly for biofuels in various legal systems, but the cross-cutting and multi-scale nature of the sustainability issue increases the complexity of regulation. In this context, this book is dedicated to a comparative analysis on the state-of-the affairs of the regulatory approaches to sustainability of biofuels in the international, EU, and Chinese legal frameworks, examining whether they may inclusively address sustainability concerns in environmental and socio-economic dimensions. This book finally concludes with observations from the comparative analysis, on the premise of which recommendations are made regarding the prospect for an inclusive regulatory approach to sustainability of biofuels taking account of the existing harmonisation, integration, transplantation, and convergence effects at different levels.

In numerous fields of law, ranging from family law to company law, private actors increasingly set their own rules, revert to private enforcement of those rules and choose the applicable law. Within each field this tendency has already been scrutinised. Until now, however, few attempts have been made to look at these phenomena together with a view to arriving at conclusions that go beyond one specific field. This book is a first attempt to fill this gap. It is relevant for scholars and practitioners working in the individual fields of law covered (private international law, company law, family law, consumer law and commercial law) as well as for scholars and policy makers trying to grasp the overall nature of the increasing privatisation of the law.

This comparative research was triggered by the assessment of property registration law published in the World Bank Doing Business reports (DB). The international and interdisciplinary team aimed to assess how legal certainty was imagined and put in practice in French and English law, using commercial real estate as a case study. Not only this study identifies the economic impact of the law in both jurisdictions, it also looked at the practitioners' functions in the dealing with commercial real estate transactions. In other words, it analyses the topical position of practitioners such as the French notaires and the role of solicitors in England. Nowadays, the profession of notaires is confronted to numerous challenges. For instance, nationality requirement for its access, has been ruled by the ECJ as contrary to the freedom of establishment and art. 49 TFEU and not justified by the exercise of public authority". In this study, the authors argue that the actual nature and the quality of the work done by the practitioners should be considered as well as financial cost and delays. They also argue that a liberalisation of professions such as civil law notaires would have very little impact on the cost associated with doing business. As a matter of fact both the English and the French mechanisms are very similar in their objectives and outcome even though they handle the same transaction differently, because of the culturally different relevant angles.

Property Law Perspectives IV contains a selection of the papers presented at the fifth meeting of the Young Property Lawyers Forum (YPLF), which took place at Wadham College, Oxford, in 2014. The YPLF is an informal, international network of property law researchers, which is primarily aimed at junior scholars. The papers presented at the YPLF are representative of the rapid developments currently taking place in property law scholarship, particularly in connection with EU law, environmental law, and internet law. Property Law Perspectives IV shows that attention is still being paid to the roots of property law. The papers in this volume take us on legal and historical journeys, exploring basic principles and well-known concepts of property law, such as the prior tempore rule, expropriation, proprietary security, and the rules on acquisitive and extinctive prescription. The wide variety of topics and jurisdictions discussed make this book a fascinating read for anyone interested in property law.

Using insights from multilevel governance and pluralism, this book provides an in-depth analysis of the development of European private law in the Dutch and German legal order. It focuses on the question whether the coexistence of national and European state and non-state actors is detrimental or beneficial for the predictability, consistency, accessibility and responsiveness of European private law. On the one hand, the discourse on multilevel governance draws attention to the possibility that problems may arise if interdependent actors do not sufficiently interact. This may be the case in European private law, where national and European legislators and courts have become increasingly interdependent on one another in ensuring that European private law develops predictably, consistently, accessibly, and responsively. The book analyzes the development of European private law by national and European state actors through codifications, blanket clauses, soft laws and general principles in the light of interdependence. In addition, non-state actors have played an increasingly important role in developing binding rules in European private law. This development necessitates more interaction between actors, and more attention for the potentially binding effect of privately developed rules on third parties' rights. The book accordingly develops a normative framework to determine the extent to which private actors should be able to develop binding rules, based on principles of democracy, private autonomy, and concerns for hetero-determination. On the other hand, pluralism perspectives advocate the development of European private law at different levels and jurisdictions in the light of responsiveness, regulatory competition, and opportunities for mutual learning. The book explores whether these benefits have materialized in the development of European private law, drawing attention to failed and successful instances of regulatory competition and mutual learning, and resulting innovations. The book sketches new governance techniques that may help interdependent actors take into account one another's initiatives and benefit from each other's insights, although they may also entail hetero-determination.