OMG – German Legal Dogmatics!

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter A. Windel
Keyword(s):  
Critical Reflection ◽  
Tort Law ◽  
Contract Law ◽  
Civil Procedure ◽  
Bankruptcy Law ◽  
Legal Questions ◽  
Legal Thinking ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Scholarly Collaboration

OMG – German Legal Dogmatics! Whoever listens closely to presentations by German legal scholars at international conferences will inevitably hear someone uttering this quiet but distinct sigh. Is it really that dire for us and our peculiar legal thinking? No: This collection of speeches given abroad proves how much we can still contribute to scholarly collaboration and systematic analyses of fundamental legal questions. The individual topics covered in this book range from a critical reflection of the school of legal dogmatics to general provisions of the pandect system, contract law, tort law, civil procedure, and bankruptcy law.

scholarly journals German Transplants in Estonian Tort Law: General Duties to Maintain Safety

2021 ◽  
Vol 30 ◽  
pp. 132-139
Author(s):  
Janno Lahe
Keyword(s):  
Tort Law ◽  
Case Law ◽  
Tort Liability ◽  
Legal Practice ◽  
Remarkable Change ◽  
General Duty ◽  
Relevant Case ◽  
German School ◽  
Legal Thinking ◽  
The Individual

The jurisprudence and case-law approach of German tort law – and, more broadly, German-school legal thinking in general – has found its way into Estonian case law on torts and into Estonia’s scholarly texts on jurisprudence. From among the catalogue of transplants from German tort law that have reached Estonian law or legal practice, the paper focuses on one whose importance cannot be overestimated: the concept of tort liability based on breach of the general duty to maintain safety. This domain has witnessed remarkable change since the beginning of the 2000s, when an analogous concept of liability was still unfamiliar to many Estonian lawyers. The article examines whether and to what extent the concept of liability based on the general duty to maintain safety has become recognised in Estonian legal practice in the years since. Also assessed is the relevant case law to date, for ascertainment of whether any adoption of an equivalent concept of liability has been successful and, in either event, what problems remain to be resolved. The importance of this issue extends far beyond that of individual questions: the recognition of general duties to maintain safety affects our understanding of the very structure of tort law, of that of the general composition of tort, and of the connections that link the individual prerequisites for tort liability. Furthermore, this constellation influences our thought in the field of tort law more generally and our approach to the cases emerging in real-world legal practice.

scholarly journals Contracts, Commerce and Roman Society

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roberto Fiori
Keyword(s):  
Contract Law ◽  
Civil Procedure ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Law And Society ◽  
Roman Law ◽  
New Form ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Characteristic Features ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Judicial Remedies

The Roman law of contract has developed itself around the idea of obligation. At the beginning of its history, transactions were possibly differentiated only at an economical level, while from the juristic point of view only the obligatio mattered, so that the judicial remedies were general actions. This was probably a legacy of archaic law and society—which valued community more than the individual—some features of which were retained until the end of the Republic. However, changes in civil procedure caused the arising of a contractual system based on typicality, and this had the further consequence that the transactions not received into the system were considered atypical, their protection being provided by the reuse of the ancient general actions under new form. At the end of the Principate, changes in society and civil procedure reduced the importance of typicality, and some characteristic features of classical contract law were lost.

Classifying precontractual liability: a comparative analysis

Legal Studies ◽  
2001 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 153-191 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joachim Dietrich
Keyword(s):  
Common Law ◽  
Civil Law ◽  
Tort Law ◽  
Contract Law ◽  
Common Elements ◽  
Ongoing Debate ◽  
Unjust Enrichment ◽  
The Common ◽  
Initial Focus

The common law has solved questions of liability arising in the context of precontractual negotiations by resort to a range of different doctrines and approaches, adopting in effect ‘piecemeal’ solutions to questions of precontractual liability. Consequently, debate has arisen as to how best to classify or categorise claims for precontractual work and as to which doctrines are best suited to solving problems arising from anticipated contracts. The purpose of this article is to consider this question of how best to classify (cases of) precontractual liability. The initial focus will be on the ongoing debate as to whether principles of contract law or principles of unjust enrichment can better solve problems of precontractual liability. I will be suggesting that unjust enrichment theory offers little by way of explanation of cases of precontractual liability and, indeed, draws on principles of contract law in determining questions of liability for precontractual services rendered, though it does so by formulating those principles under different guises. Irrespective, however, of the doctrines utilised by the common law to impose liability, it is possible to identify a number of common elements unifying all cases of precontractual liability. In identifying such common elements of liability, it is necessary to draw on principles of both contract and tort law. How, then, should cases of precontractual liability best be classified? A consideration of the issue of classification of precontractual liability from a perspective of German civil law will demonstrate that a better understanding of cases of precontractual liability will be gained by classifying such cases as lying between the existing categories of contract and tort.

scholarly journals Non-Delimitation of Incompetency Denotations in Jurisprudence and Law and the Contradiction of some of its Titles to the Law on Non-Litigious Matters

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sorush Niknamian
Keyword(s):  
Legal System ◽  
Civil Law ◽  
Civil Procedure ◽  
Legal Capacity ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Mind

“Incompetency” literally means prohibition and it is commonly used to point to an individual being deprived of his rights to take possession of his properties and his financial rights by the law. And, in other words, the incompetents are the individuals that do not possess “the legal capacity to enjoy a certain right” and are deprived from taking possession of their properties and if such a taking possession of the properties by an incompetent occurs, it is invalid and cannot take effect. In the legal system of Islam, the individual with a sort of a disease that features certain types of conditions leading to the weakness of the mind or insanity is called an incompetent. But the example cases of the incompetent and incompetency have not been delimited in the jurisprudence and law. Thus, the investigation of the instruments of incompetency from the perspective of the jurisprudential texts and the statutory provisions via offering an assumption indicating the non-delimitation of the incompetency instruments scope has resulted in conflicts in the non-litigious affairs law with the civil procedure, the necessity to rethink the causes of insanity as one instrument of incompetency in the civil law, the centrality of the incompetency for its setting the ground for the exertion of the law and the non-litigious affairs regulations as well as the incompetency of some patients with nervous diseases like hysterical conversion and dissociative hysteria and so forth. Therefore, conceptualizing the incompetency, the present study aims at assessing, then criticizing and investigating, the proofs offered by the proponents and the opponents of the incompetency of the patients with hysteria so as to consequently conclude an assumption regarding the hysteric patients’ incompetency and the relevant contradictions, if any, with the non-litigious matters law and civil procedure.

scholarly journals The Law of Obligations

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Lobban
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Tort Law ◽  
The United States ◽  
Contract Law ◽  
Public Law ◽  
The Other ◽  
Economic Changes ◽  
American Law ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
Unifying Principles

The Anglo-American law of obligations was profoundly reshaped in the two centuries after 1800, driven by social and economic changes, and changes in legal institutions and doctrines. In contract law, nineteenth-century jurists increasingly sought to put the rules of law into a coherent rational framework (inspired by continental models resting on will theory), though they soon found that this theory could not explain many contractual doctrines. In tort law, jurists were also divided over whether unifying principles underlying tort could be uncovered, with formalist efforts to find such principles being challenged by Realists who argued that tort was in effect ‘public law in disguise’. The quest for underlying principles was also pursued by scholars of unjust enrichment, first in the United States and subsequently in England; though as in the other areas of obligations, by the end of the twentieth century, there was no consensus on whether this was possible.

Introduction

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert D. Cooter ◽  
Ariel Porat
Keyword(s):  
Social Welfare ◽  
Strict Liability ◽  
Tort Law ◽  
Contract Law ◽  
Private Law ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Cost

This book examines how the law of torts, contracts, and restitution can be improved by showing how private law reduces the cost of accidents, lubricates bargains, and encourages unrequested benefits. It considers the two pervasive rules of tort law that provide incentives for actors to reduce accident costs: strict liability and negligence. It also explains how contract law achieves effiency through the remedy of damages and how restitution law allows benefactors to recover gains that their beneficiaries wrongfully obtained from them. The book makes three central claims: misalignments in tort law should be removed; in contract law, promisee's incentives should be improved; and the law should recognize some right of compensation for those who produce unrequested benefits. Each claim is based on the desire to reform private law and to make it more effective in promoting social welfare.

Personalized Legal Areas

2021 ◽  
pp. 61-84
Author(s):  
Omri Ben-Shahar ◽  
Ariel Porat
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Law ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Tort Law ◽  
Contract Law ◽  
Standards Of Care ◽  
Criminal Sanctions ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Law

This chapter illustrates personalized law “in action” by examining it in three areas of the law: standards of care under the common law tort doctrine of negligence, mandated consumer protections in contract law, and criminal sanctions. In each area, the chapter examines personalization of commands along several dimensions. In tort law, standards of care could vary according to each injurer’s riskiness and skill, to reduce the costs of accidents. In contract law, mandatory protections could vary according to the value they provide each consumer and differential cost they impose on firms, to allocate protections where, and only where, they are justified. And in criminal law, sanctions would be set based on what it takes to deter criminals, accounting for how perpetrators differ in their motives and likelihood of being apprehended, with the potential to reduce unnecessary harsh penalties.

1. Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kirsty Horsey ◽  
Erika Rackley
Keyword(s):  
Tort Law ◽  
Corrective Justice ◽  
Good Knowledge ◽  
Loss Distribution ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Individual

This introductory chapter begins by providing examples of torts. It then discusses the aims of the law of torts, the most significant being compensation and deterrence. Part of the justification for a tort is that it identifies what actions should be avoided and deters people from engaging in them. It is essential to know that action is wrongful, but a tort action may over-deter or under-deter. It may over-deter where the perception of the chance of liability is exaggerated. It may under-deter where either the chances of somebody suing to enforce their rights are small, or where the consequences to the individual tortfeasor may be slight. Originally tort was about ‘shifting’ or ‘transferring’ the loss from the victim to the defendant (corrective justice). The defendant themselves paid compensation to the victim. However, those days are gone and we are now in an era of ‘loss distribution’. In other words, it is not the defendant himself who pays, but it will be their, or their employer’s, insurer. The chapter then considers the study of torts. Tort law is almost wholly a case-driven subject and therefore a good knowledge of the cases and what they stand for is essential. The chapter presents three steps to studying cases.

Economics of Remedies

2017 ◽  
pp. 307-334 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ariel Porat
Keyword(s):  
Social Welfare ◽  
Tort Law ◽  
Contract Law ◽  
Social Costs ◽  
Legal Context ◽  
The Common

Remedies in different legal fields have much in common, and the study of remedies can teach us a lot, especially when the goals of the substantive legal fields are similar. Consider tort law and contract law. Under its efficiency rationale, tort law should minimize social costs, thereby enhancing social welfare. In order to achieve this goal, tort law should provide incentives for both the injurer and the victim to take efficient precautions. Similarly, contract law should also provide the parties with efficient incentives, in order to enable them to maximize the contractual surplus. In both torts and contracts, providing the injurer/promisor and the victim/promisee with efficient incentives is done through a combination of substantive and remedial law. Thus, both legal fields share much in common and often are adapted to the legal context to which they apply. The chapter emphasizes the common denominators of the remedies in torts and contracts.

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