The novel part of this paper is a model of the principle of proportionality, as the cornerstone of the doctrine of fundamental rights. German law, and with some modifications also the law of the European Community and the European Convention on Human Rights, do not categorically outlaw...

The law is not a bunch of scattered rules, it is a body. This simple statement suffices to demonstrate that consistency is crucial for the law. Esteemed philosophers radicalise the statement: If it stops being consistent, to them the law is no longer the law. Consequently, consistency must be an...

There is extensive literature on whether courts or legislators produce efficient rules, but which of them produces rules efficiently? The law is subject to uncertainty ex ante; uncertainty makes the outcomes of trials difficult to predict and deters parties from settling disputes out of court. In...

Social engineering refers to deliberate attempts, often under the form of legislative moves, to promote changes in customs and norms that hurt the interests of marginalized population groups. This paper explores the analytical conditions under which social engineering is more or less likely to...

Dieses Paper untersucht "property rights" im Stile der ökonomischen Analyse des Rechts. Dabei wird der Zusammenhang zwischen "property rights" und Allokationseffizienz ebenso behandelt wie der Schutz von "property rights" durch Unterlassungs- und Schadenersatzansprüche, durch Haftungsregeln...

Der Beitrag befaßt sich mit der Frage, inwieweit dem Strafrecht ein Eigengewicht im staatlichen Sanktionensystem zukommt. Im Kern geht es dabei um die wechselseitige Beziehung zwischen Strafrecht und Zivilrecht, die paradigmatisch durch die Stichworte "Strafe und Schadenersatz" oder...

This introduction to Methodology in Private Law Theory: Between New Private Law and Rechtsdogmatik (Thilo Kuntz and Paul B. Miller, eds., Oxford University Press, forthcoming) provides a thematic overview methodological questions and positions taken in contemporary American and German private...

In the thirty years since Calabresi and Melamed's seminal Property Rules, Liability Rules, and Inalienability: One View of the Cathedral, scholars have divided protection for legal entitlements into two major types: property rules and liability rules. In this Article, we uncover an overlooked,...

Laws governing relations between spouses have undergone profound changes that continue to revolutionize the standards and procedures for dissolutions of marriage. The most dramatic changes in divorce law have come from the advent of no-fault divorce, the decline in spousal maintenance awards,...

This article uses the context of tort reform legislation to trace the impact of legislation on the principles and operation of tort law, and to analyse the continuing role of the common law in an age of statutes. Broad legislative reforms raise a number of questions of statutory interpretation...