Table of Contents

Part I: Fundamentals and Method
1: Hans Baade: Stare Decisis in Civil-Law Countries: The Last Bastion
2: Pierre Legrand: Alterity: About Rules, For Example
3: Geoffrey Samuel: Comparative Law and the Legal Mind
Part II: Property Theory
4: Jim Harris: Property - Rights in Rem or Wealth?
5: Arianna Pretto: Primary Rights and Rights in Rem
Part III: Property Specifics
6: John Bell: Property and Legal Culture in France
7: Roy Goode: Are Intangible Assets Fungible?
8: James Gordley: The Origin of Riparian Rights
9: Michele Graziadei: Tuttifrutti
Part IV: Obligations
10: Peter Birks: Comparative Unjust Enrichment
11: John Cartwright: Defects of Consent and Security of Contract: French and English Law Compared
12: Mark Freedland: Ius cogens, ius dispositivum and the Law of Personal Work Contracts
Part V: Form and Formality
13: Gerhard Dannemann: Formation of Contracts on the Internet
14: Simon Whittaker: The Reformulation of Contractual Formality
Part VI: Reform
15: Xavier Blanc-Jouvan: Les Limites d'un Droit Europeen du Travail
16: Ugo Mattei: Should Europe Codify Trust?
17: Vladislav Moudrykh: Insurance Law in Post-Soviet Russia
18: Reinhard Zimmermann: Modernising the German Law of Obligations

About the Author

Peter Birks is Regius Professor of Civil Law at All Souls College, Oxford Arrianna Pretto, is Fellow of Brasenose College

Reviews

`Review from other book by this author: The list of contributors ... resembles the First XI of a virtual law faculty: there is a combination of leading Professors ... and rising stars ... Each chapter is well written and reflects the structured approach taken in the whole work. ... English Private Law would be a welcome addition to any law library.'
New Law Journal, 3 Aug 2001
`This book is a veritable tour de force on the subject. Sweeping in its scope, it offers illuminating accounts of various individual components of English private law, whilst at the same time providing a much-needed overview of how each of those components fits to form a coherent whole ... This elegantly produced book ... is ideally suited to facilitate that process of change. It will be welcomed by lawyers all over the world.'
Commonwealth Lawyer, April 2001
`This is an important book which will fill the gap for practitioners between Halsbury's Laws of England and a nutshell guide, and which legal libraries should find in great demand from solicitors, barristers and foreign lawyers.'
Marion Simmons QC, 3/4 South Square
`This magisterial work is an invaluable route map to English private law. It provides a unique, structured and principled overview of English law. It will be an indispensable tool in the hands of judges. And since the judges hold the votes practitioners will not want to lag behind.'
The Rt Hon Lord Steyn
`This is, as far as scope and status are concerned, an institutional work in the great tradition ultimately based on Gaius' Institutes. It fills one of the most lamentable gaps in the modern European law library; and it will do more than any other to make English private law accessible to continental lawyers.'
Prof. Dr. Reinhard Zimmermann
`...this is a Festschrift of the first order. That it is concise means that it is affordable; and, being affordable, no law library in Scotland can do without it.'
The Edinburgh Law Review
`The editors have succeeded, however, in producing a volume which, to paraphrase one of the contributors, is wide-ranging without slipping into the esoteric; an attribute which characterised Rudden's own work. To that this writer can add, 'enjoyable'.'
Ross G Anderson, The Edinburgh Law Review, Vol. 10:1