The European Codification Process

Mattei weighs in on a number of issues involved in the codification process of European law. He contends that current proposals for codification reflect a hasty cutting and pasting of solutions taken from a limited number of (usually northern) legal cultures. This volume contains thoughts on the issue of Codification of European Private Law and on the present state of European Private Law by one of the protagonists of the debate that is unfolding in Europe.

Taking a sometimes sharply critical view, Professor Mattei attempts to unveil what he considers biases, strategies and ideologies that affect the European legal process. The work attempts to open a basic and genuine political debate between legal scholars that Mattei considers an unavoidable pre-requisite of any major reform process in private law.

Challenging the claim of technocratic neutrality shared by much of the most influential European legal academy, Mattei uses the tools of Comparative Law and Economics to set priorities on the table and to show some of the real stakes of the present process. The work explores fundamental areas of European private law, from the sources to contracts to trust law.