New Private Law Theory

Stefan Grundmann is Professor at Humboldt-University, Berlin, for Private and Business Law, and at the European University Institute, Florence. He co-founded SECOLA (the Society of European Contract Law) and is president of the European Law School (Berlin/London/Paris/Rome/Amsterdam). His research focus is on contract, banking and company law, on regulation, governance and theory. Hans-W. Micklitz is Professor for Economic Law, Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, European University Institute, Florence and Finland Distinguished Professor at the University of Helsinki. His research interest focus on Private Law, European and International Economic Law, Private Law Theory. Moritz Renner is Professor of Civil Law, International and European Commercial Law at the University of Mannheim. His research focuses on transnational financial law and the economic sociology of law. Before joining the Law Department in Mannheim, Moritz Renner held a Lichtenberg Professorship at the University of Bremen.

• New private law theory – the core ideas; Part I . Methods and Disciplines: 1. The inside and the outside of law? ; 2. Private law and sociology; 3. Economics and private law institutions; 4. Private law and theories of communication; 5. Comparative law and legal history; Part II. Social Ordering, Constitutionalism and Private Law: 6. Societal order and private law; 7. Values in private law; 8. Constitutionalisation, regulation and private law; 9. Democracy and private law; 10. Formalism, substantive and procedural justice; Part III. Transactions and Risk – Private Law and the Market: 11. Negotiation, the function of contract and the 'justice of consensus'; 12. Knowledge and information; 13: private power; 14. Non-discrimination; 15. Risk, tort and liability; 16. Digital architecture of private law relations; 17. Between market and hierarchy; Part IV. Persons and Organizations: 18. Person, civil status and private law; 19. Theory of the corporation; 20. Actors in organizations; 21. The principal's decision: exit, voice, and loyalty; 22. Organizations and public goods; Part V. Private Law (rule setting) Beyond the State: 23. Law as a product; 24. Multi-level governance and economic constitution; 25. Transnational law; 26. Private ordering; 27. The shadow of the law and social embeddedness.

'Private law tends to suffer, notoriously, both from an identity problem (what exactly is private about private law?) and a form of tunnel-vision (its stakes are merely technical) that disqualifies it as irrelevant in the 'age of the post'. This may be why the most vital contemporary issues, from climate change to financial markets, are entrusted to public-style regulation. This book is a timely proposal to inject interdisciplinarity, pluralism and critical thinking into a 'new private law'. After so much of the world's human and natural resources have been extracted with the often invisible complicity of the 'old' private law, such a move may prove crucial now for the constitution of law's moral economy.' Horatia Muir Watt, Professor at Ecole de droit, Sciences-po